


Soulmates Are Forever

by ThirteenRedVampireBites



Series: Soulmates Are Forever, No Matter the Time [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Alpha/Omega, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega/Omega/Omega, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Artist Steve Rogers, Background Relationships, Beta/Beta, F/F, F/M, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Mild Smut, Minor Clint Barton/Loki Laufeyson/Pietro Maximoff/Phil Coulson, Multi, No Arc Reactor, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Tony Stark, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-06 02:30:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 38,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8731330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirteenRedVampireBites/pseuds/ThirteenRedVampireBites
Summary: Soulmates.Something everyone in the world has at least one of. Marked by the wrists on your tenth birthday with the beginnings of names, you have to wait to find out who is going to be yours.Steve and Bucky find out they share each other and another between them, an Anthony Edward Stark. Who is this person? And when are they going to find them?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pandeimos (bunfun)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunfun/gifts).



> This is my submission for Triad 'Verse Big Bang!
> 
> I'd like to thank my lovely artist [BunFun](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bunfun/pseuds/pandeimos) for the art! 
> 
> Here we go!
> 
> ~Kate-Lee

Sarah Rogers welcomed her Alpha son Steven Grant Rogers on July 4th, 1920 while the fireworks exploded on the rich side of town. From her first look at the small baby she’d given life to, she knew that his life would be a hard one.

Weak and already sickly looking, Steven didn’t scream like the other babies she’d heard but quietly coughed as he struggled weakly to breathe. His skin was slightly blue, and he was pale, but Sarah loved him anyways.

She gratefully took him from the midwife and cuddled him close to her chest. His weakly waving hands turned wrist up to face her, and she smiled at the smudges of black and gray on his wrists that would eventually become his Soul-Marks.

She turned to the door when it opened to accept both her Soulmates, Joseph coming in first and carefully leading Marionette to a chair next to the bed. Both leaned in to kiss her cheek before turning to the baby in her arms.

“He’s adorable,” Marionette whispered, one hand rested on her distended stomach as the other came up to brush against his cheek. The other Omega was just about eight months pregnant, and she seemed quite happy to wait for her own child to be born.

Sarah smiled, twisting her head to look up at Joseph. She leaned into his touch when he rested a hand on the top of her head and petted his fingers through her hair.

“Even if he does not make it long, we will love him all the same,” Joseph murmured, leaning down to kiss both baby and mother lightly. The Alpha was happy to have a son but worried all the same about how sick he looked already at not even an hour old.

Silence settled over the group as the adults settled in to watch over the small Alpha.

�v

Years would pass, and Steven would grow up alongside his younger Omega sister Katherine Imogen Rogers who oddly enough was even more protective of her older brother than the boy was of her. Steven was still sickly and weak at times, and often Sarah worried for his survival during the winter, but he was a little miracle, always seeming to survive against all the odds stacked against him.

An accident only months after Katherine was born had taken Joseph away from them, but Marionette and Sarah persevered; Sarah went back to work at the hospital, and Marionette started making and selling knitted garments at her sister’s store. They worked hard for what they had and savored every moment of time together.

Steven had just turned eight years old when he met Alpha James Buchanan Barnes. The other boy – only a year older than Steven – had stepped in between Steven and several other neighborhood boys – several of whom were Betas, unfortunately – who were bullying him, telling them off with words that would have gotten Steven’s mouth washed out with soap by both his Mother and his Mima.

Steven had gotten angry at first, but once he’d gone home and been cleaned up by his Mima and explained what had happened, he’d realized that the other boy had been a big help and that he shouldn’t have gotten so angry. With that in mind, he spent the next day wandering through the streets, wondering if he should apologize or not.

His choice was taken from him when he quite literally ran into the other boy. With a yelp, Steven toppled over, his blond mop falling into blue eyes when his hat fell off.

“Oof.” Steven gasped slightly, having to take a deep breath in alarm. “Sorry, sorry!”

“Eh, it’s fine, ya punk,” The other boy murmured, leaning down to help him up. With an arm around the smaller boy’s waist, James hoisted him back up onto his feet before bending down to grab Steven’s hat, beating it down onto his other palm before putting it back onto Steven’s head.

Steven tugged lightly at the cuffs of his shirt before he released them and spoke, “I’m very sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to get so angry.”

“Ma told me that I should have been better about it,” The other boy replied, pulling his hat off to shake out brunet locks.

A long stretch of silence spread between the two before Steven spoke again, “I’m Steve.”

“James, but only my Ma calls me that. I prefer Bucky,”

“Nice to meet you.”

Another silence before James spoke, “Wanna go chase the alley cats?”

Steven giggled before nodding and following after the older boy as he led them away.

After that they were inseparable. Bucky seemed to follow Steven around like a duckling, happy to keep watch over the young boy while also thinking up ideas of things for them to do. Steven’s mothers were happy as he stopped getting into as many fights because no one wanted to mess with the boy who could swear like a sailor and fight like a bear, and Bucky’s parents were happy to see that his aggression and mischievousness had an outlet in protecting and entertaining the younger sickly boy.

�v�

Bucky’s tenth birthday, on March 10th, brought the reveal of the first letters of his Marks. On his left wrist, the first letter was an A, but the rest was still hidden behind squiggles of black and gray. His right wrist’s letter was an S, and the rest was protected by strange symbols in black with an odd shape in gray.

Bucky was quite happy with the gifts he’d been given. From his parents, he’d gotten two leather cuffs to cover the Marks instead of the cloth ties he’d been using, as Marks were a special thing that only close friends and family ever got to see before a person had found their Matches. Steve gave him a sketch he’d done of Bucky playing with his sisters, and Steve’s moms gave him a new blue sweater since Bucky had outgrown his last one. The girls had all chipped in to buy Bucky a large box of sweets which he then immediately shared with them and Steve.

Bucky, after the party was over, pressed a kiss to his mothers’ cheeks before dragging Steve out to go look for the alley cat they’d been following around. She seemed to be pregnant, and they wanted to see if she’d had her kittens yet.

�v�

The week leading up to Steve’s tenth birthday was, unfortunately, full of flu and the day of his birthday wasn’t any better. Steve was laid up in bed, sick and unable to move. He was so sick that Bucky bringing his kitten over was the highlight of his week.

“Kitty,” Steve croaked, a smile blooming on his face as he looked at the calico kitten that had been dropped on his bed. She stretched before coming over and sniffing him. Steve let out a wheezing laugh as her whiskers tickled him before she settled down next to him, tucking her head into his sweat damp neck.

Bucky grinned at him, petting his leg lightly. “You ready? It should happen soon.”

“Dunno. Could be good. Could be bad,” Steve replied, his voice still quiet and croaky.

He carefully flipped his wrists over, eyes trained on them as he waited for the letters to come through. A soft gasp left his throat as a slight sting spread through his wrists as the ink separated and his first letters appeared. On his left wrist, an A in a similar font to Bucky’s had appeared, the ink seemingly tinted slightly blue like the indigo blue ink his mother used for letters to her parents back in Ireland. His right wrist had a J in ink with a slight red tint like the ones used on Aunt Marian’s hand painted signs. The rest of the letters and their picture Mark were still squiggles of ink, though the blacks had changed to match the coloring of the already revealed letters.

Steve grinned slightly, holding them out for Bucky to see. He gratefully took the leather cuffs his mothers had bought him from Bucky, wrapping them comfortably around his wrists. “Can I see?”

Bucky grinned at him as he removed his own cuffs, dropping them to the bed before holding out his wrists for Steve to see. His left wrist had ‘A       E’ with a large blank space afterwards while his right had ‘St     G          s’ along the entirety with the last ‘s’ seemingly the end of the name.

“Thoughts?” Steve questioned before leaning over to reach the water on the table next to his cot.

“Just hope they’re beautiful and smart, ‘cause you know I’m not exactly the best,” Bucky replied, wrapping his cuffs back over the marks.

“Jerk. Fifth in class. Not dumb,” Steve remarked, weakly hitting his shoulder. Bucky often did this – putting himself down because he didn’t feel as smart as everyone else even though he was still in the top ten of their class.

Bucky grinned at him, and that was when Steve realized he’d just been doing it to get a reaction out of Steve. Steve pouted at him but settled back down more comfortably, resting his head against his pillows in a cooler and much drier place.

Bucky leaned in closer to pet Kitty but other than that left Steve to fall asleep.

�v�

Bucky’s 13th birthday came quietly; Bucky had stopped wanting a big celebration around the time that he turned twelve, but he enjoyed spending time quietly with family which included Steve, Katherine, and their mothers.

After luncheon, Bucky dragged Steve out of the apartment eager to show him his Marks. Steve just rolled his eyes and followed, Kitty clinging to the back of the younger boy’s jacket. Steve shifted slightly, allowing Kitty the time to climb up onto his shoulder instead of precariously clinging to the back of his jacket.

When they’d reached their little alcove on the roof – a place that Bucky was rapidly getting too big for, while Steve remained small enough to get inside easily – and sat down, Bucky carefully removed his cuffs from around his wrists and bared his Marks to the younger boy.

His left now said ‘An    y Ed     S   k’ while his right bore the letters ‘St  e  G  n   o  rs’. Both names had taken on a new color since the last time that Steve had seen them and the symbol below taking on a faint shape as he reached out to twist the other boy’s wrist around. The design on the left was now a more circular shape rather than the blob it had been and the one on the right was also a much clearer circle than it had been.

“Any edsk and Stegnors.” Steve giggled, a hand coming up to clasp at his chest as a slight pinch of pain blossomed before he dropped it again.

“Haha,” Bucky deadpanned, flicking the younger boy in the nose lightly. “Let’s see yours, yeah?”

Steve smirked at Bucky as he began undoing the laces to his own cuffs. Once they were undone, he removed them and dropped them into his lap. Turning his wrists up so that Bucky could see, Steve studied his own marks for the first time in almost six months.

His left now said ‘A  h      w         ’ instead of the ‘A  h                ’ it had last time he’d checked. His right now bore the letters ‘J       c        r   ’ rather than the ‘J                r   ’ it had before.

“I can’t wait to find out what the names are,” Steve breathed, gently brushing his thumb over his own circles that unlike Bucky’s that were tinted blue and red, white and blue were tinted blue and red respectively.

“Me too,” Bucky replied, helping Steve put his cuffs back on before Steve returned the favour. They descended into silence after those words, just sitting comfortably together and watching the sun begin to set.

“I hope they won’t mind you,” Steve whispered without looking at Bucky.

Bucky nudged him lightly. “Doesn’t matter punk, I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

�v�

The next time they’d see each other's Marks would be Steve’s 16th birthday. Between Bucky starting to work outside of school to help with feeding his family and Steve’s extra classes so that he could tutor some of the rich kids in art, they had less and less time together that wasn’t spent taking naps or resting.

They were curled together in Steve’s bed after a busy day at both school and work when Bucky quietly asked to see Steve’s Marks. Steve only nodded and began to remove his cuffs to reveal his Marks to open air.

The Marks had obviously changed drastically in the four years since they’d shared Marks. The left had ‘An h  y E w d  t  k’ while the right had ‘J m   B ch   n  ar  s’ written in their distinctive fonts. The faint symbols of a blue triangle in a circle appearing under the letters on the left and a red star in a white circle appearing under the letters on the right.

Steve tapped Bucky’s own wrists without a word and calmly waited for Bucky to remove his cuffs. The leather dropped to join Steve’s on the bed between them. Like Steve’s Marks, Bucky’s had also changed drastically from what they’d been four years ago. Instead of saying ‘An    y Ed     S   k’ and ‘St  e  G  n   o  rs’ like they had, they now said ‘An  o y Ed   d S  rk’ and ‘St ve  G  nt  og rs’ in the drastically different fonts of his Marks. His symbols weren’t as clear as Steve’s, but the colors were much darker – the blue of his left and the red, white and blue of his right.

“Soon we’ll know,” Steve murmured sleepily as he rubbed his thumb lightly over the skin of Bucky’s hand.

“Shh, go to sleep. We can talk in the morning,” was Bucky’s sleepy reply as he curled closer to Steve, tugging their blankets up tighter around them with his free hand.

A nonsensical noise was his only answer as Steve fell asleep. Bucky just smiled before falling into sleep himself. There would be many wistful remarks made in the morning, ones that would affect both teens in ways neither would realize about the other.

�v�

The next time they’d see each other’s Marks would be just after Steve turned 18 and after months of Bucky agonizing about what to say to Steve about his Marks. It took almost a week before Bucky finally got the nerve to ask Steve about his Marks, knowing full well that the younger man would ask about his in return.

Steve dropped his cuffs to the bed where he’d sat down and held his arms out for Bucky to look at. Both his names were only missing about four letters each making them out to be ‘An hony Edw  d St rk’ and ‘J mes B chanan Bar  s’ with their still pale colored symbols beneath them.

Bucky took a deep breath before he removed his own cuffs, setting them down more carefully on the bed to waste more time. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before thrusting his wrists out so that Steve could see.

Bucky’s left wrist was the only one with an incomplete name, it said ‘Ant ony Ed a d S ark’. His right wrist, however, was an entirely different story, it’s name was filled and the shape the symbol was to be had begun to take its final shape. ‘Steven Grant Rogers’ stood out plainly against Bucky’s wrist in Steve’s own flowy handwriting and the symbol below his name was still mostly shapeless, but the colors of America were clear across the shape.

Bucky nearly jumped out of his skin when a thin hand tipped his head up so that he was looking into the smirking face of his best friend and soulmate. Brown eyes met blue and widened in shock as Steve leaned in close.

“You think I didn’t know? You think I haven’t realized that your name is on my wrist even if it isn’t complete?” Steve murmured, brushing his thumb along Bucky’s jaw. “You think I haven’t realized how odd you’ve been acting? Did you think I haven’t seen the looks you been giving me since last summer? Did you think I was blind?”

Bucky sucked in a deep breath and went shock still when Steve finished talking and lightly brushed his lips against the line of his jaw. He let out the breath when Steve’s lips touched against the skin just below his ear.

“Calm down, Buck.” Steve moved closer, sliding his hands up to rest on Bucky’s shoulders. Carefully he climbed up into Bucky’s lap and wrapped his arms around the older man’s neck, squeezing him lightly. “Love you, Buck.”

Bucky brought his arms up around Steve’s waist, clinging to the smaller form as he began to calm down. “Love you too, punk,” He croaked, pressing his forehead against Steve’s shoulder.

Steve slipped his hands up the back of Bucky’s neck and tangled his fingers into the longer sections of hair at the back of his head. He tugged Bucky’s head back from his shoulder and met the other man’s brown eyes. Leaning in carefully, leaving plenty of time for Bucky to back off or tell him no, he lightly pressed their foreheads together before gently pressing their lips together in a chaste kiss.

Each made a soft noise before the kiss deepened, both Alphas pressing tighter together happily. When breathing became an issue, Steve pulled back, breathing deeply and smiling at Bucky mischievously. Bucky, who was breathing much better than the smaller Alpha, stared at Steve in confusion and slight fear about what he was planning.

Steve just pressed a light kiss to his mouth before shoving him back against the bed. He slipped his hands away from Bucky’s shoulders and down onto the bed, making it so that he was comfortable leaning over his older soulmate.

“What–” Bucky had to swallow the saliva that had pooled at the vision that was Steve leaning over him, looking every bit the angel that Bucky had always thought of him as. “What are you doing?”

“Well, knowing you, you won’t let me be beneath you, so I’m going to be on top.” Steve hummed as he leaned down to brush his lips along Bucky’s cheekbone. “We’ll have to figure out another way later, but for now, this way works.”

Bucky groaned slightly and closed his eyes, tipping his head back against the bed.

The next moments would forever stick out in their minds. Soft kisses interspaced with giggling and laughter as they stripped each other down to skin. Flailing, bumping and touching as they carefully pulled the cloth away.

Once they were both bare, the room went silent as they looked their fill. Bucky gently ran his hands up Steve’s sides, loving how his darker skin looked against the paleness of his Mate’s. He traced lightly over the visible bumps of Steve’s ribs as he moved them up along the lines of Steve’s torso.

Steve bit his lip and let out a small whimper when Bucky traced his thumbs over his nipples. He’d known he was sensitive but this sensitive? He didn’t know if he could stand it and he could only imagine what it would be like with both his Mates.

“Shh, doll, just relax.” Bucky practically purred the words as he continued torturing Steve. He’d finally relaxed, comfortable enough with what was happening that he was falling back into his niche.

Steve whined, his hands slipping back up onto Bucky’s shoulders so that he had something solid to hold onto. “Bucky.” His voice was a whine as he squirmed against Bucky’s hold on him.

Bucky just smirked up at him, slowly running his hands down Steve’s sides. “We’re lucky that Edythe is working,” He murmured as he gently ran his thumbs across the two small scars on Steve’s hips.

Steve chuckled quietly, shifting around on Bucky’s lap as the older man’s touch tickled lightly. “Now is not the time to talk about your sisters or mine,” He choked out as he dug blunt nails into Bucky’s shoulders.

“True, true,” Bucky murmured, distracted by rubbing the back of his finger along the patch of roughened red skin at the base of Steve’s penis. A small smile bloomed on his face as Steve shuddered and whined lowly. Bucky hummed quietly before taking hold of Steve’s hips and raising him up a bit.

“Buck?” Steve questioned, even as Bucky began to move up the bed.

“We’re gonna get more comfortable.”

Steve nodded and moved up the bed after him, happily settling into the larger Alpha’s lap once Bucky had gotten comfortable leaning back against the wall and their pillows. Once settled, he reached his hand out, curling thin fingers around the shafts of both their erections.

Bucky curled his own fingers around their shafts, lightly squeezing Steve’s hand as he did so. “Ready?” The word was quiet, practically breathed into Steve’s mouth as they pressed their foreheads together.

“Yes.” Steve hissed through his teeth, eyes fluttering to half-mast as he rolled his hips gently.

Bucky snorted out a laugh before carefully dragging their hands up along their shafts, squeezing lightly at the head. He wrapped his free hand around Steve’s back, tugging the younger Alpha closer to him, drawing their mouths together. He licked lightly over Steve’s bottom lip before pushing the appendage into Steve’s mouth and exploring every nook and cranny.

They continue this way for a while before their pleasure crested, both popping weak knots as they came all over each other’s chests. Steve collapsed against Bucky’s shoulder, his breathing heavy as he shuddered with the aftershocks of his orgasm.

Bucky ran his clean hand down Steve’s back, petting over his spine happily. He relaxed back against the wall, carefully drawing Steve’s legs out of the crouch they were in so that he could relax.

Steve hummed quietly as his breathing returned to normal. He took one look at them before breaking out into giggles, “Look at the mess we’ve made.”

Bucky chuckled softly, running his fingers through Steve’s hair. “You wanna clean it up now or later?” He petted lightly over the small scar in Steve’s hair as he waited for the younger man’s answer.

“Later.” Steve yawned and curled closer to Bucky’s chest. The older Alpha just chuckled quietly before rearranging them so that they were laying down. Steve shuddered slightly before Bucky settled a blanket over them. “Sleep now, clean later.”

“Alright,” Bucky murmured into Steve’s hair as he pressed a kiss to unruly blond hair. “Goodnight.” He tugged Steve closer as they began to drift away into sleep.

�v�

War was declared in Europe and America was staying out of it for now, but both Bucky and Steve knew that it wouldn’t last long. Eventually something would draw the isolated country into war, and they needed to have plans.

First order of business was whether they would enlist voluntarily or wait until the draft was called. After weeks of arguing and a few days of Steve forcing Bucky out onto the couch, they agreed that they would enlist together the first Monday after Steve’s birthday after enlistment was called and that Steve would keep trying to get accepted until Bucky left because both knew that Bucky would be going.

So, they waited.

 

Bucky was drafted in May.

He’d had the day off and had spent it sitting in the park with Katherine and Alyce as a chaperone for them as they met with their new Alpha Beaus. Steve, Becca, and Edythe all had work or school, so it was just him.

When their dates were over, he followed after the two gossiping Omegas as they headed back to their building. He stopped at the mailbox, unlocking it with his key before digging through the envelopes within.

“Bill. Bill. Doctor Letter. Draft … card.” He blinked, numbly closing the door to the box before removing his keys and heading up to the apartment.

Edythe was in the kitchen when he entered. He waved to her absently as he set the mail on the table, grabbing his draft card. The other Alpha didn’t say anything, but he knew that she worried about him, even if she didn’t know why he was acting this way.

“I’m just going to go to our room,” Bucky whispered, heading for the room that he and Steve shared. He didn’t bother with the lamps, just settled down on the bed to stare at the card in the slowly dimming light while he waited for Steve to return.

Steve returned an hour after it had gotten dark. Hands covered in charcoal and paint he entered the room, stopping in surprise when he saw Bucky sitting on the bed.

“Buck?” Steve questioned, stepping closer to him. He took the card when it was held out to him, lighting a lamp so that he could read it. “You are hereby – oh Buck.” He wrapped his arms around the other man.

They stayed like that for a long time before Steve buried his nose in the spot behind Bucky’s ear where his scent was strongest. “We’ll be okay. We’re gonna get through this.”

�v�

For the next year, they did everything they could together as they prepared for Bucky to go. Steve had gone as many times as he could to different enlistment posts in an attempt to join up as well, each time being labelled 4F.

The night before Bucky left, he forced Steve to get dressed up, and they took Edythe and the Omegas out to see the Stark Expo. Howard Stark’s failed attempt at a flying car was the highlight of their night.

Bucky only sighed when Steve headed towards the enlistment post but followed him anyway, clutching to his uniform hat. He stopped just outside the building, grabbing Steve’s wrist gently.

Steve turned to look at him, tipping his head gently.

“I’m going to wait here. Call for me if you need me,” Bucky told him, squeezing his wrist lightly. He released him when Steve nodded and leaned back against the wall.

Steve took a deep breath before heading into the building to most likely get rejected again.

 

He was right, he did get rejected again … but he met Dr. Erskine, a scientist working with the military looking for Alphas for their new project. Steve had called Bucky in to listen to the explanation, and after a few minutes of discussion, Steve had agreed to join the group that the doctor had already gathered.

Bucky shipped out the next morning, kissing his sisters and his Mate goodbye before getting on the ship. Steve stayed standing on the dock for almost an hour after he left before he returned to the apartment to pack for his own trip away.

�v�

He went through basic easily enough. He did have to deal with the teasing of the larger Alphas – especially Howard Stark (a relative of his other Mate perhaps?) – but he dutifully ignored it and continued working on getting better. He couldn’t help being smug when – after an unfortunate incident with a dud grenade – he was the one chosen for the program.

The process was painful, bright, and left him aching but satisfied for hours afterwards. The only thing that absolutely ruined his high was the fact that he wasn’t going to be going to war but to a stage as a way of selling bonds.

He lasted four months of being pushing around the country by the Colonel before he joined the USO, hoping to at least put his monkey-dancing to some good use rather than boring himself to death and wasting everyone else’s time. At least in the USO he was making the soldiers who were doing the actual fighting happy.

 

By the time they reached Italy Steve had just about driven himself crazy – the men weren’t as glad to see him as they were the girls, which was all right, except that it only made him miss Bucky more.

Peggy was the one to tell him. The other Alpha knew how much he missed him and by the time they reached Italy she couldn’t keep the secret anymore. The 107th had disappeared fighting against Schmidt and no one was sure that they were alive, at least no one who cared.

Steve knew. Bucky’s Mark on his arm was still as bright as it was the day that they began their Bond. He was aware that Bucky was not well – proven easily by the phantom feelings of pain he’d get occasionally, – but he didn’t know where Bucky was so he’d written them off as just soldier things.

After going to see the Colonel and finding out that nothing was going to be done, Steve attempted to slip away. Peggy caught him, and rolling her eyes at him, dragged him away to find Howard so that he could go after his lover.

 

He found him. And everyone else that was missing. They were being kept in a HYDRA compound filled with all kinds of ridiculous weapons. Most of the men were weak from overwork and shit food but seemed to be in much better condition than he’d expected from how long they’d been gone.

Bucky on the other hand… Bucky was barely conscious when Steve found him in Zola’s lab. He’d been mumbling his name, service number, and the names of both he and Anthony over and over, barely acknowledging Steve’s presence until he’d kissed him.

On their way out, they were stopped by Schmidt and his lobster face. He had ranted for a long moment before the building began to self-destruct, leaving them all to run or be blown to smithereens.

Steve – practically carrying Bucky by that point – rounded up the ex-POWs and they began the journey back to Allied territory. Arriving back to camp, Bucky quickly drew away the officers’ attention away from Steve’s idiocy before he and the rest of the men were taken away to be checked out.

Bucky appeared later that night at the entry to Steve’s tent, having gotten cleared for duty and permission to share a tent with Steve. Steve looked up from where he was reading a letter that Alyce had sent before opening his arms for Bucky.

Bucky hurried over to his side, pressing himself against Steve’s chest. “You’re so big now.” He rubbed his cheek against Steve’s jugular as he curled himself up in Steve’s lap.

Steve chuckled quietly, rubbing his cheek against the top of Bucky’s head. “Mm, it’s nice to be able to hold you back properly.”

Bucky hummed quietly in response before clawing at the new military issue cuffs he’d been given by the medics after seeing the blood that covered his last pair. He tugged them off, staring down at his Marks.

His Marks hadn’t changed much since Steve had last seen them the month before Bucky had shipped out. The only change in the Marks had nothing to do with the fact that the skin beneath had been rubbed raw and bruised during the time that Bucky had spent in that hellhole.

The colors of his Marks had sharpened, changing the blacks, blues, red and white of his Marks into much brighter shades. His left wrist proudly showed the name ‘Anthony Edward Stark’ with a 2-inch wide blue circle containing an upside-down triangle below it. His right wrist had ‘Steven Grant Rogers’ written across it in Steve’s careful handwriting with a 2-inch image of Steve’s shield below it.

Steve petted his fingers through Bucky’s hair gently as he pulled the cuff hiding Bucky’s Mark off his right wrist. ‘James Buchanan Barnes’ was written across Steve’s pale freckled skin in Bucky’s hurried scrawl over top of a white circle with a red star inside of it, both outlined in a light gray to separate them from Steve’s skin.

Steve tugged Bucky as close as possible, shoving them down the bed until they were both lying down comfortably on the thin cot. “It’s okay. You’re here with me. You’re here.” He kept whispering the words over and over into Bucky’s ear as the smaller man began to go to sleep.

�v�

Months later, a mission of the Howling Commandoes would go wrong, and Bucky would fall from a HYDRA train in the Italian mountains. Steve, in his grief, wouldn’t look at his Mark and would be unknowing that it was still as bright as the last time they’d shared them in that tent.

New information, a new mission, and they were off to a HYDRA base to take a final stand against the Red Skull.

Fighting.

Fire.

The Red Skull heading for the Valkyrie that Steve knew was full of enough explosives to destroy most of New York State.

Going after him.

Fighting.

The Tesseract. Good-bye, Schmidt.

Have to go down. Have to go down.

Going down.

Cold.

Darkness.

Sleep.

�v�

Light. Sound. Stillness.

Steve opened his eyes to a white ceiling with a three-prong ceiling fan spinning lazily around.

Noise was the first thing that he noticed and when he tuned his hearing to what the noise was, confusion sparked in him. The noise was a small radio on a table across the room that was playing the commentary to a baseball game; a baseball game from May of 1941 that he and Bucky had attended in person as part of their time together before Bucky shipped out.

Immediately he knew something was up. There was something going on here. This was not 1941. How much time had passed since he’d put the Valkyrie down? How long had he been gone?

He sat up, turning his head to look out the open window next to his bed. It looked like summer outside, which was ridiculous seeing as it was the middle of March when he put that damned plane into the ocean, and there was no way his new metabolism and healing would keep him unconscious for four months.

The door opened, and a young lady dressed like a WAC stepped into the room.

“Good morning,” She greeted, stepping closer to the end of the bed as she looked at her watch. “Or should I say afternoon.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”

The game continued in the background, and he narrowed his eyes slightly before turning to her again. “Where am I really?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“The game. It’s from May nineteen-forty-one. I know ‘cause I was there.” He rose from the bed and moved to stand in front of her. “Now I’m going to ask you again; where am I?”

“Captain Rogers.”

“Who are you?!”

The door opened again, and two men dressed in black stepped in behind her. A quick move from him and they were thrown through the wall with him following them out through the hole.

“Captain Rogers wait!” The woman stopped at the hole as he pushed open the metal doors across the room and made his escape to the outside world.

He could hear her making an announcement, and he moved to flee from the building. Once outside, he simply followed the road.

And ended up in Times Square. Or at least what he assumed was Times Square based on the sheer number of ads around him.

“At ease soldier,” A voice remarked from behind him, and he turned to find a tall African-American man with an eyepatch approaching. “Look, I’m sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”

“Break what?” Steve questioned, pressing his bare wrists against his thighs.

“You’ve been asleep Cap. For almost seventy years.”

He couldn’t believe it. There was no way. This had to be a joke. There was no way anyone not even him could survive the cold of the Arctic for that long. There was just no way.

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah,” He rubbed his wrists against the smooth cotton of his pants. “Yeah, I just… I had a date.”

The man chuckled softly, shaking his head slightly. “Come with me, Captain. We have much to discuss.”

 

The man – Nick Fury as he’d introduce himself – sat him down in the back of one of the black vehicles that had pulled up to block them from civilians. As they drove to where ever they were going, he explained.

It was 2012. He’d been asleep for almost 70 years until three weeks ago when a team that had been charged with finding the Valkyrie for the past seventy years had found him just off the coast of Greenland. He’d been sent back to New York and unthawed before they put him in the room as an attempt to keep him calm while they explained what was going on.

Now Director Fury was giving him a choice; either he could go away to the rehabilitation facility in Maine called the Retreat, or he could stay at HQ and get taught there. Not wanting to be shuffled off again, Steve decided to stay at HQ and see how it went.

�v�

Two weeks passed. After a flippant comment made by one of his tutors in modern technology about Bucky, Steve had forgone speaking to anyone. An overheard conversation a few days after the first incident had him shutting himself up in his room to get away from the insensitive comments from Agents who had no idea what they were talking about.

He refused to leave his rooms except to go get food, preferring to teach himself how to make things work. He wouldn’t suffer to be around them again until he’d calmed down.

It was one of the harder days for him that brought the light he needed in this dark future he’d found himself in. He’d spent most of the morning reading up on the first ten years after the end of the war. The beginning part of the afternoon had been spent staring at the ceiling of his room from his bed after a long set of workouts on the floor.

His thoughts had just taken a dark turn when a voice interrupted his musing, “Aunt Katie always told us that her brother was a stubborn asshole.”

He whipped his head around to look at the man standing in his doorway. He was gorgeous; dark brown hair that was ruffled like he’d been running his hands through it, dark brown eyes full of mirth, toned body hugged by tight shirts and fitted jeans, and smooth mile-long golden skin.

“Well, Katie was generally right,” Steve replied, narrowing his eyes at him.

The man chuckled slightly, taking a step into the room. “Anthony Stark. Fury called to see if I could help get you settled in a way that his Agents seem to have failed.”

It couldn’t be. There was no way. It didn’t make sense. There was no way that their Mark would be someone born almost a century after they were. There was… He’d… How was he to tell Anthony that he was the reason they’d lost their Third? How do you apologize to someone you barely know for being the reason that their Mate was dead?

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispered hoarsely, gaze dropping away from the other man’s. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Anthony blinked at him and stepped further into the room, “What for?”

“I lost him. I lost Bucky,” Steve whispered back, clutching at Bucky’s mark hidden behind the thick leather wristbands that had replaced the one’s he’d come out of the ice with.

“Oh cor,” Anthony breathed, closing the door behind him before coming to sit next to Steve on the bed. “Cor, that wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I should have been faster,” Steve croaked. “I should have grabbed him.”

Anthony took a deep breath before setting a hand on Steve’s chest lightly, “How much have you read about the new developments regarding Marks, Steven?”

“Steve,” Steve told him before answering the question. “Some. Mostly about the colors and art of Marks. Then I couldn’t stomach to be reminded.”

“Tony,” Anthony replied, before continuing, “Then some things need to be explained to you.” He grabbed Steve around the wrists, grip tight around the bands on his wrists. “Sit up, and I’ll try to explain.”

Steve nodded numbly before sitting up against the headboard of his bed. He stared at Tony as the other man tapped a finger against his lips in thought.

“Have you looked at your Marks since waking up?” Tony questioned suddenly, turning to look at his wrists.

“No. I – I didn’t want to see it gone.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment before he moved to his wrists, undoing the snaps that held them in place before thrusting his wrists out so that Steve could see.

Steve’s eyes were immediately drawn to his own Mark on Anthony’s skin. It looked similar to the one he’d seen on Bucky’s wrist though the colors were a bit darker so that it could stand out more against his skin. Other than the shades of colors it was identical to the one he’d seen on Bucky’s pale skin.

Slowly, his eyes turned to Bucky’s Mark on Tony’s skin. It looked the same as he’d last seen it on his own skin, with two distinct differences. The gray outline of the circle as well as the final ‘s’ had scarred over and the color of the Mark had faded to almost white.

“He’s still alive, sol. It’s faded, not scarred. It means he’s alive,” Tony whispered, curling his fingers around Steve’s. “He’s still alive, Steve. We just need to find him.”

“We just need to find him,” Steve breathed, staring blankly at Tony’s faded Mark.

“We just need to find him,” Tony agreed, squeezing his hand gently.

�v�

Two more weeks would pass with Tony coming at least once a day to visit with him or calling him on the phone that had been one of the first things that Tony had taught him about. Books would be recommended by the brilliant British AI that his Match had created and he’d spend most of his time either reading them or working out at the gym while listening to new music that had been recommended to him from multiple sources.

His interactions with the other Agents were limited to his current Case Agent – an older man named Coulson – and the other Agents under his control – specifically Agents Romanova and Barton – as well as a few conversations with Fury and his second Agent Hill. His interactions with civilians and other outside sources were limited to Tony, his doctors, and the cashiers at the few stores he’d visited to get different supplies.

Steve was in the middle of staring at a sketch he’d begun of Bucky, sadly stroking his thumb over the edge of the page where there wasn’t any charcoal when a rapid knocking started on his door. He jumped in surprise, having been so caught up in memories that he hadn’t heard anyone approach. He carefully set down his sketchbook and charcoal pencil before getting up and going to answer the door.

“We have a problem,” Was what greeted him when he opened the door for the redhead standing in the hall. “Coulson needs to see us.” She grabbed his wrist and began dragging him down the corridor to the conference room that was often used by those of Coulson’s troop.

“Nat? What’s going on?” He questioned as he followed her down the hall.

“Not here. Coulson knows more,” Natasha replied as they passed a Level-One Agent. Steve sighed but smartly kept silent until they reached the conference room.

Coulson was pacing back and forth along the end of the room, wringing his hands back and forth as he attempted to get himself back under control.

“Phil? What’s going on?” Steve questioned tentatively, settling down into one of the chairs at the end of the table.

“You know that Clint is one of my Matches,” Phil started once everyone was seated. “What we never told anyone was that we have three, the last one having appeared within the last year, but three none the less.

“Last month, Fury had me send Clint to a research facility in New Mexico. I got a call this morning to say that the facility had been attacked; some of the personnel killed and some taken. Clint was among those taken.”

“What do your Marks have to do with this?” One of the younger Agents – Skye perhaps? – questioned with a tilt of her head. “And how can one just suddenly appear?”

“I’m getting to that,” Coulson replied, rubbing his face with his hands before speaking again, “Clint and I shared each other with two others – a Pietro Maximoff and someone whose name has been hidden until now.

“Our hidden Mark is for Loki Laufeyson, and he is the man who attacked the facility.”

 

Silence. The room was silent for a long time before Steve spoke, “What happened at the facility?”

“The facility was mainly research into different energy forms. Dr. Selvig – the head researcher – was looking into a type of energy that could be used to travel between possible worlds. Fury had been called in after a report that his energy form was causing disturbances.

“Soon after Fury arrived, the energy went out of control and a portal opened for a man dressed in armour and holding a scepter. He had magic like we haven’t seen before.

“The scepter was another magical item that we couldn’t be prepared for. At a single touch of the scepter's power, it can turn anyone into Loki’s puppet.”

Steve frowned, tilting his head. “Don’t Marks make it so that Mates can’t subjugate each other?”

“Exactly, which is why this is worrying,” Phil answered, “Either Clint is planning something, or something else is going on that we don’t know about. For now, only those in this room, Fury, and Tony –” He gave Steve a sharp look that told him if anyone else found out there would be hell to pay. “– are to know what is going on. We need to figure out what is going on.”

 

A week later, they did.

Fury had called for the Avengers Initiative to be activated and so Natasha and the others were sent out to collect those who were not close by. Natasha went to India to get Dr. Bruce Banner, a man who could turn into a ‘giant green rage monster’ and a brilliant scientist according to Tony. Skye had been sent to check on a friend of hers as well as any of Clint’s bolt-holes that she knew of to see if the archer had left any messages. Steve, on the other hand, had to call Tony and relay everything that was going on to him while still trying to figure out what was going on for himself.

Tony arrived after only an hour, his bracers wrapped around his wrists and his case-suit in hand. The Omega was calm as he set the case on the conference table and moved to wrap his arms around Coulson in a comforting hug, pheromones being pumped out in hopes of calming the Alpha down.

Coulson let out a shuddering breath, tension dropping as he wrapped his arms around the Omega. He pressed his forehead against Tony’s shoulder and focused on his breathing to keep calm in the wake of losing his Omega.

“We’ll get him back,” Steve remarked into the silence of the room. “We’ll get them both back.”

 

They’d barely had time to settle into their new temporary quarters before they were called into action because Loki was terrorizing people in Germany. Tony was the first one to head out, though Steve still beat him to the square.

After a long bantering debate between Tony and Loki – both Omegas attempting to figure each other out – Loki was taken into SHEILD custody to see if Coulson could get him to talk. He’d seemed to go willingly enough after Steve gave them both his I’m-so-disappointed-in-you-I’m-Captain-America face.

What they hadn’t been counting on was Thor.

The other God broke into the jet and grabbed Loki, dragging him away before inciting an argument between the two. Tony had merely sighed loudly into the comm before going after them.

In Steve’s opinion, it took much too long for Tony to return with their wayward Gods but he didn’t say anything. He sat back down on the bench in the back of the quinjet and settled in for the ride back to the Helicarrier.

When they got back, Loki was locked into the Hulk Room until Coulson could gather himself enough to go see him, Thor was taken to see Fury so that the one-eyed man could yell at him for nearly costing them Loki. Everyone else went to join Coulson in the conference room; Steve settled into one chair and after Tony had exited the suit he was pulled into Steve’s lap, Natasha dropped down next to them, settling between Dr. Banner and the pair.

“I’ll go to speak with him. First I want Nat to go and talk with him,” Coulson murmured, staring at the screen that projected the cell’s camera. “Study him, figure out what you can but try not to engage him. I’ll speak to him later today.”

 

Natasha went in to see Loki, but the Omega said nothing to her, only studied the Neutral carefully before going back to staring at the door she’d come in. She sighed quietly and settled into a chair near the glass dome where the god was being kept.

After an hour of sitting with Loki, Natasha stood back up from her chair and moved to exit the room. With a final look at him, she opened the door and exited, going back to the conference room to tell them what she suspected.

“Well?” Steve questioned, looking at her as she entered the room.

“Thor, one question before I answer. What color are your brother’s eyes?” Natasha asked, looking to the larger blond as he settled in across from Steve and Tony.

“Green. Loki’s eyes are green.”

“Well then. Currently, Loki’s eyes are a faint blue which points me to the idea that something is going on. He’s also quiet; much too quiet for the proclaimed silver-tongued God of Lies and Mischief.”

Coulson let out a deep breath and was about to speak when an explosion rocked the helicarrier. He bit his lip and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Clint,” He hissed, sighing quietly. “Go and attempt to wrangle our wayward agents. You will let Loki do what is needed.”

Steve just nodded before dragging Tony away to see what they could do. Natasha flipped herself up into the vent that Clint would usually be hiding in before going to track him down. Dr. Banner went to go find somewhere to sit out while Thor went to go see his brother.

 

An hour later and the fight was over with mainly beneficial consequences. The helicarrier had been stabilized again. They’d gotten Clint back. They’d also gotten some of the other wayward Agents back.

Unfortunately, Loki escaped and during his escape had done a few things that worried the Team. He’d antagonised both Thor and Bruce – which caused the scientist to transform – which had gotten them fighting and Loki released. After locking the two fighting brutes in the Hulk Cage, he’d pressed the button which had dropped the cage from the aircraft and headed for the ground. Loki had also materialized his scepter and stabbed it through the fleshy part of Coulson’s shoulder when the man half-heartedly attempted to stop him.

The wound wasn’t fatal so with a sigh of relief, they settled down to wait for both Coulson and Clint to be checked by Medical and released. A nurse came out to get them after twenty minutes to take them to Clint who was resting in a room with some ice for his aching head after Natasha had to punch him.

The man in question frowned at her in annoyance when she entered before settling back against the fluffy pillows. He ran his fingers through his hair, studying the group carefully before shifting on the bed.

“You wanna tell us what’s going on?” Natasha questioned, settling down on the edge of the bed.

“Should wait for Phil,” Clint replied, turning the ice pack over and setting it back against his head.

With a sigh, they all settled in to wait for Phil to be released from surgery. It was only another half-hour before Phil was released but he was still out from the anaesthetic, though the nurse told them that he’d received an antidote and should wake up in a few minutes. Another twenty minutes, Phil was awake enough for the conversation that needed to happen.

“Everything comes back to the moment that Loki fell,” Clint began, biting his lip as he attempted to get everything into words.

He then went on to explain how after falling Loki had ended up in the hold of the Mad Titan – “Thanos, I think he called him.” – And had his mind rearranged to suit the needs of his captor. His orders had been to come to Earth and retrieve the Tesseract – “I don’t know what he’d need with that glowing piece of shite but…” – Which is why the facility was attacked. He told them about how Loki had killed the agents and scientists before coming into close enough range for their Marks to connect and recalibrate Loki’s brain. Otherwise, he never would have done so. He told them about how Thanos still had some hold over Loki’s brain, enough to know what was going on around him, which is why they kept the charade that Loki had taken over his mind. Since then Loki had been half-heartedly getting ready to invade the planet to seem as if he was continuing with what Thanos wanted, but they had plans in place which would break all of Thanos’ hold and allow Loki to remain on Earth with them.

Once he’d finished explaining Coulson told them what happened in the Hulk Room. How Thor and Loki had gotten into a verbal argument that had set Dr. Banner off. Coulson had no choice but to let Loki out so that they could contain Bruce who Thor had been fighting to hold back. After they had been locked in, Loki had materialised his scepter and his armour. Phil told them that for a long moment Loki’s eyes had been green and he’d come close enough to touch before he’d backed off again and visibly allowed his eyes to return to the light blue they’d been. He told them how Loki’s voice had been in his head as he apologized – “He said that he was sorry it had to be this way but that it was the only way.” – For what he was about to do before he stabbed him in one of the only non-fatal parts of the human torso. Phil remembers being awake for long enough to watch as Loki pushed the button that would drop the Hulk Cage to land.

With all the explanations out of the way, they began to plan as they headed back to New York to where Loki was going to hold his grand finale.

 

The battle only took a few hours. Chitauri were killed and thrown about by all, but they just kept coming with the portal still open. Natasha had the ability to close the portal, but Tony told them to wait.

“Tony what are you doing?” Steve questioned, ducking another blast of whatever energy the Chitauri’s weapons put out.

“I’ve got a nuke coming in,” Tony responded. “And I know exactly where to put it.”

“Tony.”

“Sol, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Steve could only bite his lip before telling him to do it and losing himself in fighting off the remaining Chitauri who were unfortunate enough to be still close by. He’d already lost one mate. He didn’t know if he could stand to lose the other.

Steve spared enough time to look up at his Match as he flew past with the nuke in his grasp. Once that moment was over, he was back to shoving his shield through the weak points on Chitauri armour.

Clint’s commentary of Tony’s journey kept Steve focused on trying to keep himself calm and kill the Chitauri that were still wandering around.

He stared up at the sky after Tony disappeared, waiting.

“I can close it!” Natasha called urgently.

After a long moment, Steve gave the order for her to close it and turned his attention away from the sky.

“He’s not slowing down,” Thor remarked, swinging Mjolnir in preparation to go after the falling form of Tony.

Before he could do so, a large green mass slammed into the falling red and gold figure, slowing down his descent as they crashed into the side of a building.

Steve immediately sprinted over to where Hulk was setting Tony on the cement. Thor ripped off the faceplate, and they stared at the calm face of Tony Stark.

With a growl Steve fought to get his gloves off, pulling both pieces of blue fabric off and throwing them away. He carefully brushed his fingers against Tony’s cheek as the others began to pull the functionless suit away.

“Tony,” Steve murmured, feeling the spark of Mark-magic reaching out to Tony’s. “Wake up Bambi. Let me see those brown eyes.”

With a gasp, Tony’s eyes opened, and he looked up at Steve.

“Told you I’d be okay Sol,” He breathed, shifting to sit up.

Steve let out a harsh laugh before wrapping his arms around Tony’s shoulders and pulling him up out of the dead suit.

Everyone on the ground gathered around the pair before they headed into Stark Tower to get Loki from where Hulk had slammed him around a bit. After collecting the now green-eyed god, they headed back to the helicarrier so that Clint and Loki could be returned to their Alpha.

Tony and Steve – after making sure that everyone else had been situated where they need to be – headed back to the tower to start renovations. Clint and Loki stayed under the watchful eyes of Phil as they healed from the battle. Bruce joined them at the tower after Tony offered him a space where he could work in peace and be protected from the military insanity that was still following him around. Natasha went back to work. Thor returned to Asgard with the Tesseract and news of Loki.

�v�

Almost a year and a half later, and fifteen months of living together with the rest of the Avengers – including Loki and Phil who currently weren’t considered Avengers – and the crazy that came with them, Tony was preparing for the surgery that would remove the arc reactor from his chest. He was busy redesigning the arc reactor to be full installed into every suit and creating a pendant which would help with the expected problem of his body not regulating heat well for the first half-year after his surgery.

He had the idea of what he wanted, but he wasn’t sure how to get the heat output that he needed. Tapping his fingers against his tabletop, he turned to look at Steve who was sitting on the fluffy couch against the wall near the door sketching in the new sketchbook that Tony had given him for his birthday. One look at Steve, and he knew how he wanted it to work. With a quick recalculation, he knew what to do and pushed the new pendant into production.

With that finished he got up from his stool and moved to sit next to Steve. Steve immediately and absentmindedly wrapped his arm around Tony’s shoulder, drawing the Omega into his side. Tony looked down to see what the other was drawing, a smile blooming on his face when he saw what was on the page.

Part of the reason for this decision to get his arc reactor removed was for his own health and wellbeing, but most of it was because he wanted to be able to have kids which was not recommended with the diminished lung capacity and overworked cardiac system. He wanted kids with both his mates; little blond rascals running around with faux innocent smiles, and little brunet brats bouncing around asking questions.

Drawn on the page by Steve’s deft hand were the three of them – Bucky, Steve and himself – curled together around a small set of twin bundles.

“I can’t wait for that to become a reality,” Tony whispered as he pressed his nose to the side of Steve’s neck, breathing in the light pine scent that clung to the Alpha’s clothes and rubbed off on his skin.

“It will. Don’t worry Bambi,” Steve murmured quietly, tipping his head to kiss the top of Tony’s head. “Did you get everything finished?”

“Mm,” Tony hummed, rubbing his cheek against Steve’s shoulder. “My pendant will be ready by Thursday and then I go in for surgery on Friday.”

“You’ve had your shot?” Steve questioned, looking to the Omega carefully.

“Not yet. Bruce and Hellen want me to take it later tonight, closer to when I actually go into surgery,” Tony answered, nuzzling closer.

Tony with the help of Bruce and Hellen Cho – a scientific friend of both men – had reverse-engineered enough of the super soldier serum from a sample of Steve’s blood for the surgery to be possible. Tony just had to have five shots of it – four before the surgery at weekly intervals and one just after he’d been anaesthetized for the surgery.

Already the changes from the serum were visible in the Omega. The gray that had been appearing in Tony's hair were virtually gone already. The lines and wrinkles on his face had smoothed out, and slight freckles had begun to bloom over the skin under his eyes. He seemed years younger and much happier about it.

“Alright. Perhaps a nap then?” Steve questioned, cuddling Tony close as he closed the sketchbook and shoved it away.

“Mm.” Tony hummed in reply as Steve shifted them around until they were laying down on the fluffy couch. He curled against Steve’s chest and cuddled down under the fleece blanket that Steve wrapped around him.

Steve hummed a song quietly as he rubbed his hand up and down Tony’s back. He knew that Tony would be okay, if only because he refused to give up the search for Bucky until they found him and brought him home.

“Sleep well, Bambi.”

 

The next week was spent with Tony trying to get as much as he could have finished before he had to go in for his surgery and the consequent bedrest that would come with it.

Thursday Tony got his pendant from R&D in a small box that was sent up with Pepper when she came to visit before she had to leave for a conference in Paris. He grinned happily as he pulled the pendant that looks like his current arc reactor from the box and switched it on, pulling it over his head to lay it next to Steve’s new dog-tags.

A soft purr left him as the heat settled into him. He pouted at Pepper when the Beta laughed at him. He curled his body up on the couch he was sitting on and wrapped himself in one of the many fleece blankets that Steve had been leaving around for him.

That was something Tony still wasn’t used to; Steve – or any Alpha really – caring for him enough to leave him soft things and petting him when they were close together. Rhodey, even though he was a Beta, had done that while he was around but after they’d graduated and Rhodey’d joined the military that had slowed down to almost a stop due to the distance between them.

He curled up in his blanket happily, humming softly as he rested his head against the pillow on the end of the couch. Pepper merely shook her head before waving and leaving him to his sleep.

 

Friday came quietly; Tony woke up curled against Steve’s chest under a blanket with the Alpha’s arms wrapped tight around him. He hummed happily and nuzzled into Steve’s neck.

Steve rumbled quietly before blue eyes opened slightly to look at him. “Good morning, Bambi.”

“Good morning, Sol,” Tony replied, kissing his cheek lightly.

“Are you ready for today?”

“Mm.”

Steve hummed quietly, lightly kissing his forehead and hugging him close to his chest. He cuddled Tony close to his chest, humming softly and rubbed his hand along Tony’s spine.

They’d spend the rest of the day in bed, just being together until they had to leave for the hospital at seven that night.

Steve fingered the tags around Tony’s neck lightly as they moved into a more comfortable position and hour before they had to get up. “I wish I could have given you the originals.”

“It was impossible, Sol. I like these ones much more anyways.”

“Why?”

“You could have just not bothered getting any new ones, but you went ahead and did so. Then you got me to mark them for you before you gave them to me.”

Steve grinned down at him and lightly kissed his forehead before settling in to rest again for the next while before they’d have to get up and get ready to go.

Steve bundled Tony into a pair of warm cotton pants, a long-sleeved Henley and a fluffy fleece sweater of his that hung huge on Tony’s thin frame. He packed up one of the fleece blankets he’d been hoarding as well as one of the soft plush toys that he’d secretly ordered offline to give Tony as another courting gift – the others being his dog tags and the multitude of fleece things that he’d ordered for his Omega Mate.

He curled Tony into his arms as Happy drove them to the hospital. He pressed a kiss to the side of Tony’s head and sighed quietly. Tony just patted his thigh lightly before pressing closer to him.

It didn’t take long after they arrived for Tony to be called to get ready. Steve followed him back to his room, biting his lip gently and clutching their bag tightly in his hands. He settled down into the lone chair near the window while Tony went into the bathroom to change into the scrub pants that were required by the doctors.

Tony returned clutching his folded clothes to his chest. He set them on the little table by the bathroom door before jumping up on the bed, getting comfortable for the time being. He looked at Steve who was staring out the window, watching as the blond stared off over the top of the neighboring building.

“I’ll see you when I get out,” Tony told him, leaning forward to grab his hand. He pressed the pendant and Steve’s dog tags into his hand, curling his fingers around the items.

Steve sighed and nodded, tucking the two necklaces into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt. He looked up when the door opened, and a nurse stepped in.

“Alright Mr. Stark, we’re almost ready for you,” The nurse greeted, his dark hair pulled back from his face in a loose bun. “It should be about another five minutes then we’ll come get you for surgery.”

“Thank you,” Tony replied, settling down comfortably into his bed.

 

The waiting time passed with the two conversing quietly about what Tony had found on Bucky – which was limited to seemingly improbable sightings of the man every twenty years with the last one being in 1992 where someone claimed they’d seen him in downtown Reno.

Both looked up as the nurses entered to take Tony away to the operating room. Steve made a soft noise before going to Tony’s side. He leaned down and pressed a light kiss to the Omega’s mouth before standing back to let the nurses prepare him to leave.

“I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” Tony told him as they wheeled him out of the room. He waved over his shoulder to Steve as they exited.

Steve smiled slightly before settling back down into the chair to wait. He pulled his sketchbook out of their bag before turning his attention to the street outside the window.

 

Eight and a half hours later, Steve looked up as the door opened and Tony was wheeled back into the room. He set the sketchbook aside and watched as they settled him in.

The first nurse that had come to see them stepped up to his side and waited with him until the others had left the room before he began to explain, “Mr. Stark will most likely wake up for a few moments in a few hours. Try to get him to drink something. We’ll be back to check on him at six. Keep him warm and comfortable. If you need anything, Mr. Rogers, please don’t hesitate to buzz.”

Steve simply nodded before moving to Tony’s side, digging the two necklaces out of his pocket as he moved. He easily lifted Tony’s head before pulling them down around his neck. Carefully making sure that they touched none of the bandages, Steve lightly petted over the pendant before pressing a light kiss to the unconscious man’s forehead.

After making sure that the blankets were covering him as much as possible, Steve went back to their bag to get the fleece one he’d brought with them. He stepped back to the bed, throwing it over top of the hospital blankets and making sure that it was wrapped around the visible sections of Tony’s slim body. He smoothed it down before studying Tony’s face for a long moment.

He still couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have both his brunets, though one was missing. A shiver went down his spine at a phantom breeze before he moved to settle his own body onto the cot along the wall at the foot of Tony’s bed. He flopped down on his side facing Tony, staring at the other man for a long time before he slowly fell into Morpheus’ arms.

�v�

Almost a year of no major catastrophes and the entire team was busy planning a ‘Yay-No-Major-Apocalyptic-Events!’ Party in celebration of there not being a need for the whole team at one time for almost an entire year (the fight between the Avengers and Dr. Doom – who, in the opinion of Tony, was a Fantastic Four problem anyway – didn’t count as a major event because the idiot set himself on fire by accident almost immediately after they arrived.) They were all excited and anticipating celebrating a whole year of no craziness – which was promptly ruined by the attack against the Director in downtown New York.

Getting a call from the landlady at one of the team’s escape houses was not what Steve was expecting as he started suiting up. As soon as he’d greeted her, she began chiding him for leaving his music on too loud. He frowned before telling her that he’d be right back to turn it off. He stared at the phone for a long moment before telling the team where he was going and pulling his regular clothes on over his uniform.

When he got to the apartment, loud music was playing from the record player in the corner of the room and Fury was draped across the armchair next to it.

After a five-minute conversation filled with more secrets than the entirety of the world’s governments, a distinct pop sounded, and red bloomed across the white shirt the director was wearing.

Steve immediately looked to where the shot had come for and after making sure that the Director would be fine in the company of the Agent living next door climbed out the window to go after the shooter.

What he hadn’t expected was the masked metal-armed man that he found on the roof of the building across the way, who caught the retractable shield that Steve threw at him in his metal hand like he was catching a ball.

They stared at each for a long minute before the other man dropped the shield to the roof and disappeared over the side of the building. Steve called the shield back to him as he headed over cautiously. Looking over he found nothing, not even a trace of the mysterious man.

With nothing, Steve returned to follow Fury to the hospital. He stared at the thumb drive he’d been given by the Director before he’d been shot for a long time as he got to the hospital to find Natasha and Clint waiting for him.

He subtly handed the drive over to Natasha as he walked past to go into the director’s room. He visited for almost an hour before heading back to the tower, stopping only long enough to get Tony’s favourite coffee.

The looks he saw upon entering the tower stopped him in his tracks. Every one of his teammates gathered looked shell-shocked and terrified.

“What?” He questioned, stepping up to Tony’s side and settling on the arm of the Omega’s chair.

“We looked through the drive you gave Nat,” Phil stated, his fingers clutching to the napes of Clint and Loki’s necks as they sat next to his legs where he was settled in the other armchair.

“And?”

“HYDRA is still around,” Tony answered quietly, skittishly grabbing at Steve’s sleeve as he took the coffee from his Mate with his free hand.

“How,” Steve couldn’t even muster the energy to make it a question.

“SHEILD. The Director found evidence that HYDRA has been a part of SHEILD since the start,” Tony replied, sipping at his coffee carefully as he got his thoughts together. “Dad and Aunt Peggy kept Zola close after you captured him under the orders of Colonel Phillips. He seems to have started recruiting again once he reached America, directly under the noses of the Founders.”

“What are they trying to do now?”

A long silence spread through the room as they tried to figure out what HYDRA could be planning.

“Project Insight,” Clint breathed from the floor, staring at the coffee table in front of him.

“What?!” Phil looked down at his Mate in shock at the very thought.

“Insight is supposed to be an anti-terrorist preventative measure,” Clint responded, blinking rapidly as he sorted through his thoughts.

“Oh Norns,” Loki breathed, picking up on Clint’s idea. “They’re going to use it to get rid of every threat to HYDRA.”

“Starting with us,” Natasha added flatly. She knew where this was going. Project Insight’s weapons would first be used to take out Avengers Tower before it would be turned on the civilians that stood in the way of HYDRA’s plans.

“Time to call in the others,” Bruce murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Shall I begin messaging the others?” JARVIS questioned quietly.

“Please,” Was Tony’s only comment as he settled against Steve’s side.

“Calls going out to Miss Potts, Colonel Rhodes, Mister Hogan, Lieutenant Wilson, Agent May, and Agent Skye. Anyone else?” The AI asked.

Steve sighed quietly, he hadn’t wanted to bring Sam into this, but it seemed as if the former Pararescue was about to be drawn in whether he wanted him to be or not.

“Pass a message to Doctors Foster and Cho,” Bruce requested, biting his lip. “We’re going to need all-hands-on-deck. Including Thor.”

The God of Thunder had been on Asgard until the previous week. He’d come to visit for a few days before heading off after his girlfriend who was currently in Amsterdam.

With a collective sigh, the team settled in to wait.

 

Once everyone had gathered – the Agents and Doctors arriving with Thor due to Loki’s magic – plans were hatched.

“We need one of the agents,” Phil remarked as they prepared, staring at the hologram idea board. “We need someone to get information from. Did we find a list of HYDRA agents?”

“We have three names,” Tony replied, sifting through the information on the drive. “The rest are encrypted still.”

“Who?” Skye questioned, looking up from where she was cleaning her sidearm.

“Jasper Sitwell – fucking hell – Brock Rumlow – no fucking surprise there – and John Garrett,” Tony listed, tipping his head to the side as he stared at the last ID card. “Why does he look familiar?”

“He was one of the Agents assigned to look after me after I woke up,” Steve grunted, cleaning his own weapons. He couldn’t believe how naïve he’d been – the old saying ‘cut off one and two grows back’ was true in this case.

“Oh right.”

“We’ll have to get Sitwell,” Clint remarked, marking down more plans. “Rumlow has his STRIKE team, and Garrett is on assignment in Moscow – the irony – but Sitwell is a paper pusher, he’ll be painfully easy to terrify and catch.”

Which is how Natasha, Sam, and Steve ended up in a car on the highway with a snivelling man in the backseat next to Sam as they attempted to shake off their tail.

Fighting broke out when the car was flipped, the same man that Steve could remember seeing on the roof stepping out of one of the following vehicles carrying a grenade launcher.

The fighting dropped down onto the street below them, and Steve watched Sam and Natasha fight for a quick second before he turned his attention back to the metal-armed man in front of him.

Several rounds of gunfire slammed into the shield as Steve moved to keep the man’s attention on him rather than on Natasha and Sam who were quickly dispatching the men that had come with this one.

They went back and forth for a long time before Steve got a good hit in, which knocked the man’s mask away. He only spared the mask a quick glance before settling into a stance where he’d be protected if the man came at him again.

When the man turned to face him again, his arms dropped slightly, and he nearly fell to his knees. “Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Steve blinked at him for a long moment before speaking again, though he brought the shield back up because it was evident that he didn’t remember him.

“You are. You were born James Buchanan Barnes to Winifred and George Barnes in nineteen-nineteen. You had three younger sisters; Edythe Marie, Alyce Rosemary, and Rebekah Caroline.” Steve circled him slowly to keep him focused. “Your names began to appear in nineteen-twenty-nine, and by nineteen-thirty-seven they were complete to read ‘Anthony Edward Stark’ and ‘Steven Grant Rogers’ –”

The man wearing Bucky’s face cut him off by staring at something behind him, and when he turned to see Natasha and Sam approaching, he relaxed slightly and turned to face the now empty space where Bucky’d been standing.

The colorful curses that spill from his mouth would usually make him color, but he just had his Mate within his reach, and now the other Alpha is gone. Again.

With a practically feral growl, Steve slammed the shield into the pavement before taking a deep breath to calm himself down. He looked at the others before speaking, “We’re going back to the tower. We’re going to have to fix this.” He stalked off after that, pressing lightly to the tracking chip in his shield before settling down to wait for someone to come get them.

When the quinjet settled amongst the rubble, and the ramp opened to reveal Tony standing in the hold, Steve attempted to plaster a smile on his face but knew from the look on Tony’s that he’d failed. The Omega wrapped his arms around the Alpha gently and nuzzled against his cheek.

“He was here,” Steve whispered into Tony’s skin as he dropped his shield to the floor. “Bucky was so close.”

Tony choked slightly at the information before pulling back to look at him. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. Even with the shaded goggles, I would know him anywhere.”

“We’ll get him, sol. We’ll get our lune,” Tony replied quietly, pressing their foreheads together. Tony drew him farther in and coaxed him into sitting down before turning to Natasha and Sam, “We’re getting suited up when we return. We have no choice but to go in now before Bucky’s desertion forces their hand.”

He returned to the cockpit, talking quietly with Clint who was piloting before returning to Steve’s side. He drew the Alpha’s head down to his lap and began to run his fingers through dirty blond hair before they started to talk about what they were going to do.

 

They all suited up and headed to Triskelion, prepared to fight. They knew that there would be resistance – most likely from Alexander Pierce, the current Leader of both SHEILD and HYDRA.

They’d split up, Natasha and Clint headed to the airport to head off the World Security Council members so they’d have an in. Natasha took the place of the only female Council member who gladly gave up her place to stay in her own jet where she had an opportunity to sleep off a monumental migraine that she’d been developing since taking off from London.

Clint hid the quinjet when the helicopter came for the Councillors and watched as they left before radioing in to the others to let them know.

The fight to get the chips into the helicarriers only took twenty minutes after Deputy Director Hill blew up some of the fighter jets that HYDRA Agents were preparing to use.

Steve barely registered the fight against Bucky, at least until the end when he’d put the chip in and activated it.

He stared down at the form of his Mate for a moment before he flipped down off the catwalk to where Bucky was pinned beneath part of the metal structure. He didn’t hesitate to lift the beam off him. Once the other was free, he picked up his shield and watched as he got to his feet.

“You know me,” Steve remarked, not in the slightest bit put out when Bucky punched the shield and forced him back a step.

“No, I don’t!”

“Bucky,” Steve grunted, pulling the shield higher to protect himself. “You’ve known me your whole life.” He hadn’t been expecting the backhand, but he went where it pushed him. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

Force on the shield as Bucky screamed “Shut up!” at him pushed him back further, flinging him about like a ragdoll.

He reached up and shoved the helmet off, dropping it to the glass below his feet. “I’m not going to fight you.” He dropped the shield and spared a single moment to watch it plummet down into the Potomac before he spoke again, “You’re my friend. And my Mate.”

He could barely breathe as Bucky tackled him to the floor. He could see the wild Alpha in Bucky’s eyes – his goggles having been knocked off at the beginning of their fight – Bucky’s blue and brown eyes.

A steady growl picked up in the other’s chest as he began to wildly lash out. His hits calmed, and he whimpered out, “You’re my mission.”

Steve merely watched him for a long moment through one eye, the other having already swollen shut. “Then finish it. ‘Cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

Tony’s soft voice added in from the comm on Steve’s sleeve, “And no matter the time I will bring you home.”

Bucky stared at him for a long time, and looked about to speak when a large part of the carrier broke off and crashed down next to them, sending Steve into the water.

 

Steve couldn’t remember what happened next but from how Tony tells it: Bucky dove down to get him, and dragged both him and the shield up onto the bank. Steve remembered none of this, just waking up in Medical at the Tower with his limbs wrapped up while they healed from the fall against water.

After two weeks Steve was allowed out of his bed in medical as long as he took it easy and used the crutches provided to him. He sighed dramatically before agreeing and heading to the common floor to see what everyone else was up to.

“What are you doing?” He questioned when he noticed that everyone was gathered around the room, each with their tablet in hand.

“Nat shoved everything onto the internet,” Clint began as he dropped his tablet to his lap. “Everything – HYDRA shit included. So now we’re going through it to see what we can find.”

“What have you found so far?” Steve hobbled carefully over to the loveseat where Tony was sprawled across one end.

“So far: three weapons caches that not even Hill knew about, a research facility specializing in attempting to Hybridize humans with animals, and a chocolate factory,” Sam rattled off, stretching out on the floor to get more comfortable.

“A chocolate factory?”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Tony replied, shifting around under Steve could comfortably lay against his legs and rest his head on his lap.

“What are we looking for exactly?” Steve asked as Tony handed him another tablet.

“Anything that could be an issue, so human experiments that are still alive, any weird anomalies like the chocolate factory, etcetera,” Tony replied, one hand dropping from scrolling across the tablet’s surface to run through Steve’s hair.

Steve hummed happily at the touch before beginning to go through the list of files at his disposal.

 

At the end of the night, just before dinner, they went through their findings for the day and kept a running tally of who had found some weird things while maintaining a list of everything of importance.

So far Clint was winning the weird shit list with twelve and Sam came in a close second with ten.

The list of worrying issues seemed longer than the constitution, with several things circled in a multitude of colors as the highest priority. Among the list of problems was a list of ten other Winter Soldiers that had been created at different intervals with different serums, and a shorter list of activated Mutants that were still alive – which included a set of twins with the last name Maximoff.

The Winter Soldiers were listed as being kept in three different facilities in two countries – Russia (Whouffle Island, and somewhere in the Siberian Mountains) and Brazil (Somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest. The Mutants were listed as being in three other facilities in three countries – some small country called Sokovia (this was where the twins and two others were being kept); one in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany; and one in the forests north of Novinka, Russia.

With that information, they started looking to see when the next meeting of the United Nations would be. A quick call by Coulson to the Secretary of State and their answer was found – a week until the next session, and they were still taking speakers, so after a carefully worded request, they were booked to speak before the members.

 

A week later and they were all gathered, but only Coulson, Tony, Natasha, and Loki were to talk. Coulson and Tony were to explain the problem, Natasha was to explain what they were going to do in regards to getting both the Soldiers and the Mutants out, and both Loki and Tony were to outline the actions they take after getting them out.

The last speaker concluded her announcement before bowing and leaving the room. Steve watched as the others wondered into the room from the sidelines.

“Good morning, Representatives,” Coulson greeted, stepping up to the podium with the others just behind him. “We have a very urgent matter that has to be brought to your attention.

“If you’ll look at page twenty of your guide for today's proceedings you see a list of forty-nine individuals. Each of them is someone who could pose a possible danger to the world. Ten of them have been injected with versions of the Super Soldier Serum and are currently under some form of stasis in Russia and Brazil. The other thirty-nine individuals are those of the Homo Sapiens Superior population.

“We don’t know how many of them are living and we’re requesting permission to investigate.”

One of the representatives in the back of the room pressed a button on her table and spoke into the microphone, “What are you planning to do?”

Natasha stepped forward to the podium to talk, “Our primary goal is to destroy as many of HYRDA’s holds as possible while liberating anyone we can.”

Tony rolled his eyes at her before gently nudging her away from the podium to speak himself, “We’re only looking – at this time – to free as many of those affected by HYDRA like my Matches as possible. If we must kill them because there is no other option, it will be done in a humane way. Otherwise we will gather them up and bring them to a secure facility where they will be rehabilitated and then reintegrated into society.”

Another representative turned on his microphone before speaking, “How do you plan to rehabilitate them?”

“The facility is equipped to handle a rampaging Hulk,” Tony told him, having seen the look on the man’s face. He ran his fingers through his hair before speaking again, “We have specialists on board to talk to each of them. Both Loki and Professor Xavier of Xavier’s School for Gifted are also on hand with helping deal with the Mutants.

“We – the Avengers I mean – are all affected by our pasts, and we are most likely the best to help deal with the consequences of what HYDRA has done to each and every one of those that we will find.”

 

After the meeting, and with the approval of the Representatives to go looking for those listed, the Avengers that had come to the meeting gathered in the lobby. Steve, and Sam who’d been keeping him company, joined the other four to wait for their car. He hadn’t actually been paying attention to anything but focused once he registered the approach of someone from behind him.

He turned with the rest to face a lithe African man who’d approached with a young woman who appeared to be a relation of his.

Natasha was the first to speak, “King T’Challa.” She bowed to him in a sweeping gesture which each of the others followed.

The Royal simply waved it off and smiled at them. “Madam Romanova,” He greeted in return. “I just wanted to extend the services of my Kingdom if they are needed.”

Steve blinked, his hands trembling slightly. He couldn’t speak but agreed with Natasha’s thanks to the young King. He suddenly remembered an article he’d read about the previous king’s death.

King T’Chaka had been visiting family in Argentina when his car had careened off the side of the road and down an embankment. The oddest thing about the incident was that the King’s driver had survived, unconscious on the edge of the road but alive none the less.

Steve squeezed Tony’s hand desperately, leaning into Tony’s side to ground himself.

T’Challa spoke for a long moment with Phil before he dipped his head to them and turned away to go to his own car that had arrived.

Phil sighed quietly and rubbed his fingers over his temples, “King T’Challa has offered his services more specifically for when we find James. He and his own technologists looked through the files on James, they found some notes that suggest that he has had his brain messed with. They don’t want him to be too badly harmed so they’ve offered to have their own specialists deal with him until we have time.”

Steve didn’t want to have to use T’Challa’s help, but he knew that both Tony and Bucky would force him to send the latter away to Wakanda until they had time to deal solely with Bucky’s issues. He just nodded his head and calmly walked to the car once it’d stopped in front of them.

Tony shook his head when Sam opened his mouth and followed after his Match.

�v�

Another month and a half passed of the team clearing out HYDRA facilities on their way to the one in Sokovia before they finally arrived in the small country.

The facility was in an old castle at the top of a hill above the city, and immediately Steve hated the sight of it. The fact that this architecturally beautiful place could be used to torture dozens of people immediately darkened his view of it.

The team carefully picked their way across the terrain in between them and the castle, trying to keep from being spotted. They reached the front doors, and the battle commenced.

Steve barely noticed the red shimmering energy surrounding objects around the room or the silver streak that passed by, knocking down HYDRA agents before anyone could reach them.

Once all the Agents had been decommissioned or killed, Steve pulled his cowl off and studied the number of men around. His count of the dead was a dozen, and the existing unconscious ones was an even fifty-three.

Turning his attention to his team, he wasn’t surprised to see Tony and Bruce at the machines in the room, going through the information but he was surprised to find Clint off to the side with his arms wrapped a pair of young adults.

“Clint,” Steve called, stepping close and watching the door for Thor and Natasha who’d disappeared to go through the rest of the rooms.

“Steve, let me introduce you to Pietro and Wanda Maximoff,” Clint remarked, dropping his arms from around their shoulders to their waists.

“Captain,” The girl greeted, brushing red hair back behind her ears as she pulled away from Clint’s embrace to shake his hand.

“Miss Maximoff,” Steve greeted in return, a small smile blooming on his face.

“I have to tell you how we came to this,” Wanda said, thin fingers full of red wisps as she gestured to him.

“Absolutely.”

“Our parents were killed in the early part of two-thousand-and-four by the American military who were attempting to free our country from the Russians. A bomb with Stark Industries written on the side landed in our apartment but failed to go off. We were there for three days before anyone could rescue us.

“For years, we hated all Starks until shortly after we signed up for this. We were promised revenge and that was what pulled us here but things were not what we were told.” Wanda had started the explanation but Pietro rested a hand on her shoulder and continued, “We were pushed into tests that nearly broke us. Wanda’s powers weren’t hard to get to the surface as she’d had some ability before this but to get mine to the surface they pushed too hard.

“We’d been waiting to escape for months now and then two weeks ago, a new guard came, but he didn’t seem like the other guards. He told us that the Avengers were cleaning out the bases and on their way here.

“We were to wait to be let out and then help in any way that we could.” Pietro ran a hand through his white hair, motioning to Clint with the other, “I hadn’t expected to find my Matches amongst them.”

Pietro went on to explain how the ‘guard’ had looked. Steve immediately knew that Bucky had been the one to come for them. And when Pietro passed on the message that he would see them in Siberia, Steve knew immediately that they would only find him after going for the last of the Winter Soldiers. They just had to finish up and then they’d get him back.

�v�

Another three months of clearing out HYDRA bases, and the removal of thirty of the listed names on their list to the Home – the name that had been agreed upon for the rehab facility – and they were on their way to Siberia for the last Winter soldiers.

Clint landed the new extra large quinjet just down the way from the coordinates of the facility and watched as Tony and Steve – the team had agreed that Steve and Tony would go alone to collect Bucky before going after the Soldiers.

Steve took a deep breath of the cold Siberian air before following Tony to the open door of the bunker. He listened to the silence for a long moment before heading in the direction that he could sense Bucky.

Tony carefully pushed open the heavy door to the cryo room. He scanned the room before speaking, “Only one heat signature.”

“Bucky?” Steve called, stepping farther into the chamber and stopping short at the blood on the cryo tubes that were full. “Bucky?!”

“Stop worrying, mo shíorghrá.” Bucky’s voice rang out from the other side of the room, behind the empty pod where Steve gathered that Bucky had once been. “There was no other choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stevie,” Bucky sighed, staring at the chair in the center of the room. “They wiped us every time before sticking us back under. I couldn’t remember my last mission before you touched me but I remember now.”

“What did you do?” Tony asked, watching the Alpha carefully.

“I’m sorry, m’fhíorghrá,” Bucky told him, beating his metal hand against the chair. “I’m sorry I killed them.”

Tony gaped at him for a long moment before taking a deep breath. “You didn’t kill them, lune. The Alpha Soldier did. The Alpha did.”

“Howard was taking a failed version of the serum to be destroyed before they were to go on vacation. It was only supposed to take an extra hour.

“They were a few meters ahead. A bullet to the tire and the car had spun into a tree. Maria was already dead; her seatbelt had broken and she’d gone through the windshield. Howard was barely conscious.

“A bullet to the chest, and Howard was no more. Stole the serum. Returned. Made them.” He motioned to the five pods. “They were stable for the first few weeks, then they turned unstable. Started killing techs. Had to be put under and haven’t been used since.

“It was better to just put them down because there is no changing them. They’re killers, and they relish in it.”

“Buck,” Steve stepped up to his side and wrapped his arms around the other Alpha.

“Natalia – sorry, Natasha – told me what was going on. She started leaving me notes in the facilities after you were gone. I know about Wakanda. You’re going to take me there until you can figure out how to get rid of this piece of shit –” He motioned to the metal arm with his flesh one before continuing, “And the programming. I refuse to have someone accidently finding out the words and using them against you.”

Steve merely sighed against Bucky’s shoulder before nodding and pulling away. “Come on, there’s no point in staying here then.”

Tony – who’d stepped out of the suit while Bucky spoke – bounced over on careful feet and threw his arms around Bucky’s neck. “We’ll miss you.”

Bucky chuckled wetly, pressing their foreheads together. “I’ll miss you guys too.”

 

They took a few minutes to get themselves together before exiting the bunker to rejoin the others. Steve shook his head at them before leading Tony and Bucky onto the jet. He moved up to speak with Clint about contacting King T’Challa about them coming to Wakanda.

Clint nodded after Steve was finished and begun sending a message to T’Challa using the private radio line for Wakanda. It only took a few minutes for a message with coordinates to arrive. Clint copied them into the GPS before preparing the plane to leave. Natasha returned to the cockpit from going through all the boxes that Bucky had put aside as well as rigging the place to blow.

Steve moved to settle down next to Tony and Bucky for the ride. He dropped down on Bucky’s left side, gently taking the metal hand in his own.

 

Arriving in the lush green kingdom of Wakanda took all their breaths away and seeing the young King made Steve all the more grateful for the future.

T’Challa greeted them happily, eyes fixed on Sam for a long moment before he focused on explaining that they would be putting Bucky under the next day as it was late enough and they wanted him to get a good meal, a nice shower, and a good restful sleep before putting him back under ice. He explained that he’d had rooms set up for them and that he’d take them there to get ready for dinner, which was to be shared between them and the King’s remaining family members.

As each entered their room, they thanked the King profusely before disappearing through the self-closing door.

Steve snickered to himself as Sam was the last one left with the young King. He turned to watch as Bucky carefully rooted around the room.

They settled into the shower carefully, all three pressed together tightly as they carefully touched and washed every inch of the others.

 

The next morning, Steve woke up with Bucky pinned between him and Tony, the Omega wrapped around Bucky like an octopus. He smiled sleepily, watching the two bright spots in his life curled together like a pair of kittens. He gently brushed his fingers over Bucky’s hip before getting up to get ready for the day.

He set out warm clothes for Bucky, even though he knew that the other Alpha wouldn’t feel the cold. It made him feel better to know that he was taking care of his Matches.

An hour later and they were all gathered in the lab where Bucky would be placed back into cryo. The pod he’d be stored in looked like it was something out of one of the weird science fiction movies that Loki enjoyed. It was all sleek glass and shiny silver metal and it visually made Bucky relax.

Two techs came over to assess Bucky’s health and run a few tests before they left him to say his goodnights. Steve and Tony were the first to go over to where he was sitting on the small exam table. None of them said a word, simply being close to one another.

The rest of the team quietly said their goodnights to Bucky before leaving the three men to talk.

“I’ll be back before you know it, Stevie,” Bucky commented quietly, tapping his fingers gently against the other Alpha’s abs. “If I know you guys well enough, it should only take a couple of months. Tony and Bruce will work with Doctor Cho and T’Challa’s techs to figure out my arm.”

“T’Challa’s graciously gifted me with enough vibranium to make you three arms,” Tony told him, dainty fingers reaching up to play with one of the braids that Bucky’s hair had been pulled into by Thor and Natasha.

Bucky smiled at him before continuing with his speech, “I’m sure that Loki is already conversing with the brain doctors and Professor Xavier about my head. So, you see, it’ll be fine.”

Steve silently nodded his head before leaning in to press his forehead against Bucky’s temple.

One of the techs came over to tell them that it was time and both Steve and Tony released their Match, settling in to watch as he climbed into the pod and followed the instructions. He waved at them before stilling and closing his eyes, letting the cryo begin.

�v�

Three months. That was how long it took before the magics of Loki and Professor Xavier’s Mutation broke the final hook of HYDRA’s programming in Bucky’s mind. They’d visited once every couple of weeks, with Natasha or Wanda on hand to say the switch, and attempted to remove the multitude of hooks that HYDRA had in Bucky’s brain.

It took nearly as long for the doctors to figure out the safest way to remove the damn arm. The stupid thing was tied into nerves and bolted to bones, but not in a painless way, it was as if they wanted to torture him with constant pain.

After two and a half months, they figured out how to get rid of it. It took another week after that for Bucky heal and to figure out how to meld the new arm on.

But now, three months later, Steve and Tony were about to see him awake for the first time. Steve was agitatedly pacing the room they were waiting in for Bucky while Tony simply sat on the plush couch and stared at the door.

The door opened and they both excitedly looked up before being disappointed by the fact that the newcomer was Natasha and not Bucky.

She smirked at them before stepping away from the door to let it open again and reveal Bucky to them.

Tony immediately jumped up from his seat and threw himself at Bucky, who caught him with a laugh and spun him around.

Steve made his way over cautiously, watching Bucky for any signs of uncomfortableness. Bucky rolled his eyes once he’d set Tony down before he grabbed Steve by the collar of his shirt and pressed a sweet kiss to the other Alpha’s mouth.

“Don’t be dumb,” Bucky told him, wrapping Tony in his arms and leaning into Steve’s warmth.

Steve choked slightly before wrapping his arms around the two of them, burying his head against Bucky’s neck.

“’Til the end of the line, ya punk.” Bucky shifted slightly to press Tony between them.

“I will always bring you home,” Steve croaked.

“Soulmates are forever, no matter the time,” Tony murmured, eyes closing in bliss as he leaned against his Alpha Mates.

 

**~Fin.**


	2. Expanded Version

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Expanded Version of _Soulmates Are Forever_ in preparation for the new year and the next in the series.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an expanded and edited version of the previous. There are a few changes and it is a bit different but there were some errors that needed to be addressed before _No Matter the Time_ comes out in the new year. 
> 
> I've gone over it a few times, but if you see anything I missed, let me know.
> 
> ~Kate-Lee

Sarah Rogers welcomed her Alpha son Steven Grant Rogers into the world on July 4th, 1920 while the fireworks exploded on the rich side of the city. From her first look at the little baby she’d given life to, she knew that his life would be a hard one, if he even managed to live through his first winter.

Weak and already sickly looking, Steven didn’t scream or cry like the other babies she’d been around but instead quietly coughed as he struggled weakly to breathe. He was pale, and his skin had a blue tint to it while all his veins were visible below translucent skin, but Sarah loved him anyways. 

She gratefully took him from the midwife and cuddled him close to her chest, both to sate her Omega who craved skin contact with her pup and in hopes that her body heat would add some color to his skin. His weakly waving hands turned wrist up to face her, and she smiled at the tiny smudges of black and gray on his wrists that would eventually become his Soul-Marks.

She turned to the door when it opened to accept both her Soulmates, Joseph coming in first and carefully leading Marionette to a chair next to the bed by a soft hand on her elbow. Both leaned in to kiss her cheek before they turned to the baby in her arms.

“He’s adorable,” Marionette whispered, one hand resting on her own distended stomach as the other came up to brush thin fingers against Steven’s cheek. The other Omega was just about eight months pregnant, and she seemed quite happy to wait for her own child to be born.

Sarah smiled, twisting her head to look up at Joseph. She leaned into his touch when he rested a hand on the top of her head and petted her fingers through her sweaty hair.

“Even if he does not make it long, we will love him all the same,” Joseph murmured, leaning down to kiss both baby and mother lightly on the forehead. The Alpha was happy to have a son, but worried all the same about how sick he looked already at not even an hour old.

Silence settled over the group as the adults settled in to watch over the small Alpha.

#  **~x~**

Years would pass, and Steven would grow up alongside his younger Omega sister Katherine Imogen Rogers, who oddly enough was even more protective of her older brother than the boy was of her. Steven was still sickly and weak at times, and often Sarah worried for his survival during the winter, but he was a little miracle, always seeming to survive against all the odds stacked against him.

An accident only months after Katherine was born had taken Joseph away from them, but Marionette and Sarah endured: Sarah went back to work at the hospital, and Marionette started making and selling knitted garments at her sister’s store. They worked hard for what little they had, and savored every moment of time together.

Steven had just turned eight years old when he met Alpha James Buchanan Barnes. The other boy – only a year older than Steven – had stepped in between Steven and several other neighbourhood boys – several of whom were Betas, unfortunately – who were bullying him, telling them off with words that would have gotten Steven’s mouth washed out with soap by both his Mother and his Mima if he’d used them.

Steven had gotten angry at first, but once he’d gone home and been cleaned up by his Mima, and explained what had happened, he’d realized that the other boy had been a big help and that he shouldn’t have gotten so angry with him. With that in mind, he spent the next day wandering through the streets, wondering if he should apologize or not.

His choice was taken from him when he quite literally ran into the other boy. With a yelp, Steven toppled over, his mop of blond hair falling into blue eyes when his hat fell off onto the ground.

“Oof,” Steven gasped slightly, having to take a deep breath in alarm. “Sorry, sorry!”

“Eh, it’s fine, ya punk,” The other boy murmured, leaning down to help him up. With an arm around the smaller boy’s waist, James hoisting him back up onto his feet before bending down to grab Steven’s hat, beating it down onto his other pale before putting it back onto Steven’s head.

Steven tugged lightly at the cuffs of his shirt and scuffed the toe of his shoe against the ground before he released his sleeves and spoke, “I’m very sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to get so angry with you.”

“Ma told me that I should have been better about it,” The other boy replied, pulling his hat off to shake out brunet locks.

A long stretch of silence spread between the two before Steven spoke again, “I’m Steve.”

“James, but only my Ma calls me that. I prefer Bucky.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Another silence before Bucky spoke, “Wanna go chase the alley cats?”

Steve giggled before nodding and following after the older boy as he led them away.

After that they were inseparable. Bucky seemed to follow Steve around like a duckling, happy to keep watch over the younger boy while also thinking up things for them to do, which kept them both out of too much trouble. Steve’s mothers were happy as he stopped getting as many fights because no one wanted to mess with the boy who could swear like a sailor (from going with his Dad to the Docks when the older Alpha went to work) and fight like a bear (his older cousins were great teachers), and Bucky’s parents were happy to see that his Irish aggression and mischievousness had an outlet in protecting and entertaining the younger sickly boy.

#  **~x~**

Bucky’s tenth birthday, on March 10th, brought the reveal of the first letter of his Marks. On his left wrist, the first letter was an A, but the rest of the letters were hidden by strange symbols in black with the symbol simply an odd gray blob. His right wrist’s letter was an S, and the rest of the letters were protected by a swirling design while the symbol was still a gray mass of swirled lines that looked a bit like a flower.

Bucky was quite happy with the gifts he’d been given. From his parents, he’d gotten two soft brown leather cuffs to cover the Marks, instead of the cloth ties he’d been using, as Marks were a special thing that only closer friends and family ever got to see before a person had found their Matches. Steve gave him a sketch he’d done of Bucky playing with his sisters. Steve’s mothers gave him a new blue sweater since Bucky had outgrown his old one. The girls had all chipped in to buy Bucky a large box of sweets which he then immediately shared with them and Steve.

Bucky, after the party was over, pressed a kiss to his mothers’ cheeks before dragging Steve out to go look for the alley cat they’d been following around for the past few months. She seemed to be pregnant, and they wanted to see if she’d had her kittens yet.

#  **~x~**

The week leading up to Steve’s tenth birthday was, unfortunately, full of flu and the day of his birthday wasn’t any better. Steve was laid up in bed, sick again and unable to move any farther than the washroom. He was so sick that Bucky bringing his kitten over was the highlight of his week.

“Kitty,” Steve croaked, a smile blooming on his face as he looked at the calico kitten that had been dropped on his bed. She stretched before coming over and sniffing him. Steve let out a wheezing laugh as her whiskers tickled him before she settled down next to him, tucking her head into his sweat damp neck.

Bucky grinned at him, petting his leg lightly through his blanket. “You ready? It should happen soon.”

“Dunno. Could be good. Could be bad,” Steve replied, his voice quiet and croaky.

He carefully flipped his wrists over, eyes trained on them as he waited for the letters to come through. A soft gasp left his throat as a slight sting spread through his wrists as the ink separated and his first letters appeared. On his left wrist, an A in a similar font to Bucky’s had appeared, and unknown to Steve, who has total color blindness and can only see in monochrome, the ink on both portions of his Mark was seemingly tinted a slight blue in the right light, like the ink that Sarah would use for her letters to her family back in Ireland. His right wrist had a J in ink with a slight red tint like the ones used on his Aunt Marian’s hand painted signs, while the symbol portion of the Mark was still gray but now flecked with red and white. The text of the left was hidden by symbols of a similar nature to the ones hiding Bucky’s A-name letters, while the text on the right was hidden by odd letters that Steve thought he recognized from the Polish shop down the street from his Aunt’s, but he couldn’t be sure. The picture portions of his Marks were simple designs of connected circles in their respective colors.

Steve grinned slight, holding them out for Bucky to see. He gratefully took the leather cuffs his mothers had bought him from Bucky, wrapping them comfortably around his wrists before holding still so Bucky could fasten them.

“Wish I could see them in color though.” Steve sighed quietly, flopping his hands down against his chest. He had to sit up slightly with Bucky’s help to cough before he settled down again.

“Can I see?” He asked hoarsely once he’d settled, reaching out to tap the other’s wrists.

Bucky grinned at him as he removed his own cuffs, dropping them to the bed before holding out his wrists for Steve to see. His left wrist had ‘A------ E----- -----’ with a large blank space of symbols between letters and afterwards while his right had ‘St---- G---- -----s’ along the entirety with the last ‘s’ seemingly the end of the name.

“Thoughts?” Steve questioned before leaning over to reach the water on the table next to his cot.

“Just hope they’re beautiful and smart, ‘cause you know I’m not exactly the best,” Bucky replied, wrapping his cuffs back over the marks.

“Jerk. Fifth in class. Not dumb,” Steve remarked, weakly hitting his shoulder. Bucky often did this – putting himself down because he didn’t feel as smart as everyone else even though he was still in the top ten of their class.

Bucky grinned at him, and that was when Steve realized he’d just been doing it to get a reaction out of Steve. Steve pouted at him but settled back down more comfortably, resting his head against his pillows in a cooler and much drier place.

Bucky leaned in closer to pet Kitty but other than that left Steve to fall asleep.

#  **~x~**

Bucky’s 13th birthday came quietly; Bucky had stopped wanting a big to-do around the time he turned twelve, but he enjoyed spending time quietly with family, which had come to include Steve, Katherine, and their mothers.

After a luncheon, Bucky dragged Steve out of the apartment eager to show him his Marks. Steve just rolled his eyes and followed, Kitty clinging to the back of the younger boy’s jacket. Steve shifted slightly, allowing Kitty the time to climb up onto his shoulder instead of precariously clinging to the back of his jacket before following after Bucky who stood on the bottom step of the staircase up, waiting for them.

When they’d reached their little alcove on the roof – a place that Bucky was rapidly getting too big for, while Steve remained small enough to get inside easily – and sat down, Bucky carefully removed his cuffs from around his wrists and bared his Marks to the younger boy.

His left now said ‘An----y Ed---- S---k’ while his right bore the letters ‘St--e- G--n- -o--rs’. Both names had taken on a new color since the last time Bucky had shown them off, and the symbols below had begun taking on a faint circle shape as Steve reached out to twist the other boy’s wrist around. The design on the left was more circular now rather than the blob it had been before, and the one on the right was more circular but it had kept the flower shaping.

“Any edsk, and Stegnors.” Steve giggled, a hand coming up to clasp at his chest as a slight pinch of pain blossomed before he dropped it again.

“Haha,” Bucky deadpanned, flicking the younger boy in the nose lightly. “Let’s see yours, yeah?”

Steve smirked at Bucky as he began undoing the lacings to his own cuffs. Once they were undone, he removed them and dropped them into his lap. Turning his wrists up so that Bucky could see, Steve studied his own marks for the first time in almost six months.

His left now said ‘A--h--- --w--- -----’ instead of the ‘A--h--- ------ -----’ it had the last time he’d checked. His right now bore the letters ‘J---- --c----- --r---’ rather than the ‘J---- -------- --r---’ it had before.

“I can’t wait to find out what the names are,” Steve breathed, gently brushing his thumb over his own circles that unlike Bucky’s were tinted darker red and blue rather than the faint red, white, and blues of Bucky’s Marks.

“Me too,” Bucky added, helping Steve put his cuffs back on before holding still so Steve could return the favour. They descended into silence after those words, just sitting comfortably together and watching the sun begin to set.

“I hope they won’t mind you,” Steve whispered without looking at Bucky.

Bucky wrapped an arm around his shoulders and nudged him lightly with his hip. “Doesn’t matter punk, I’m with you ‘til the end of the line,” He responded, tapping his head lightly against Steve’s.

#  **~x~**

The next time they’d see each other’s Marks would be Steve’s 16th birthday. Between Bucky starting to work outside of school to help with feeding both his family and the remaining parts of Steve’s, and Steve’s taking on extra classes of rich kids he was tutoring in art, they had less and less time together that wasn’t spent taking naps or just sleeping in general.

They were curled together in Steve’s bed after a busy day at both school and work when Bucky quietly asked to see Steve’s Marks. Steve only nodded and began to remove his cuffs to reveal his Marks to open air.

The Marks had obviously changed drastically in the four years since they’d last shared Marks. The left had ‘An-h--y E-w--d -t--k’ while the right had ‘J-m-- B-ch---n -ar--s’ written in their distinctive fonts. The faint symbols of a blue triangle in a circle appearing under the letters on the left and a red star in a white circle appearing under the letters on the right was visible to Bucky.

Steve tapped Bucky’s own wrists without a word and calmly waited for Bucky to remove his cuffs. The leather dropped to join Steve’s on the bed between them. Like Steve’s Marks, Bucky’s had also changed drastically from what they’d been four years ago. Instead of saying ‘An----y Ed---- S---k’ and ‘St--e- G--n- -o--rs’ like they had, they now said ‘An--o-y Ed---d S--rk’ and ‘St-ve- G--nt -og-rs’ in the drastically different fonts of his Marks. His symbols weren’t as clear in the shape they were to be as Steve’s, but the colors were much darker – the blue of his left, and the red, white, and blue of his right.

“Soon we’ll know,” Steve murmured sleepily as he rubbed his thumb lightly over the skin of Bucky’s hand.

“Shh, go to sleep. We can talk in the morning,” was Bucky’s sleepy reply as he curled closer to Steve, tugging their blankets up tighter around them with his free hand.

A nonsensical noise was his only answer as Steve fell asleep. Bucky just smiled before falling into sleep himself. There would be many wistful remarks made in the morning, ones that would affect both teens in ways neither would realize about the other for a long time.

#  **~x~**

The next time they’d see each other’s Marks would be just after Steve turned 18 and after months of Bucky agonizing about what to say to Steve about his Marks. It took almost a week before Bucky finally got the nerve to ask Steve about his Marks, knowing full well that the younger man would ask about his in return.

Steve dropped his cuffs to the bed where he’d sat down and held his arms out for Bucky to look at. Both his names were only missing about four letters each making them out to be ‘An-hony Edw--d St-rk’ and ‘J-mes B-chanan Bar--s’ with their still pale colored symbols beneath them.

Bucky took a deep breath before he removed his own cuffs, setting them down more carefully on the bed to waste more time. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before thrusting his wrists out so that Steve could see.

Bucky’s left wrist was the only one with an incomplete name, it said ‘Ant-ony Ed-a-d S-ark’ while the symbol was just a mass of blue lines. His right wrist, however, was an entirely different story, its name was filled in and the shape of the symbol was seemingly almost complete. ‘Steven Grant Rogers’ stood out plainly against Bucky’s wrist in Steve’s own flowy handwriting and the symbol below his name was still partially shapeless in places, but the colors of America were clear across the shape.

Bucky nearly jumped out of his skin when a thin hand tipped his head up so that he was looking into the smirking face of his best friend and Soulmate. Brown eyes met blue and widened in shock as Steve leaned in close.

“You think I didn’t know? You think I haven’t realized that your name is on my wrist even if it isn’t complete?” Steve questioned him in murmur, eyes hooded slightly as he brushed the pad of his thumb over the stubbly line of Bucky’s jaw. “You think I haven’t realized how odd you’ve been acting? Did you think I haven’t seen the looks you’ve been giving me since last summer? Did you think I was fully blind?”

Bucky sucked in a deep breath and went shock still when Steve finished talking and lightly brushed his lips against the path of his thumb. He let out a heavy breath when Steve’s lips touched against the skin just below his ear.

“Calm down, Buck.” Steve moved closer, sliding his hands up to rest on Bucky’s shoulders as he carefully climbed up into Bucky’s lap, before wrapping his arms around the older man’s neck, squeezing him lightly. “Love you, Buck.”

Bucky brought his arms up around Steve’s waist, clinging to the smaller form as he let out a shuddering breath, beginning to calm down. “Love you too, punk,” He croaked, pressing his forehead against Steve’s shoulder.

Steve slipped his hands up the back of Bucky’s neck and tangled his fingers into the longer sections of hair at the back of his head. He tugged Bucky’s head back from his shoulder and met the other man’s brown eyes. Leaning in slowly, leaving plenty of time for Bucky to back off or tell him no, he lightly pressed their foreheads together before gently pressing their lips together in a loving but no less chaste kiss.

Each made a soft noise before the kiss deepened, both Alphas pressing tighter together happily and rubbing their bodies together lightly to scent each other. When breathing became an issue, Steve pulled back from the kiss, panting slightly and smiling at Bucky as mischievously as he could. Bucky, who was breathing much better than the smaller Alpha, stared at Steve in confusion and slightly fear; he’d seen this look before and it almost never ended pleasantly for the recipient, but somehow, he felt that whatever the other was planning was about to have a _very_ good ending.

Steve just pressed a light kiss to his mouth before shoving him onto his back against the mattress. He slipped his hands away from Bucky’s shoulders and down onto the blankets below Bucky, making it so that he was comfortable leaning over his older Soulmate.

“What–” Bucky had to swallow the saliva that had pooled in his mouth at the vision that was Steve leaning over him, looking every bit the angel that Bucky had always thought of him as. “What are you doing?”

“Well, knowing you as well as I do, you won’t let me be beneath you, even if it would be more comfortable, so I’m going to be on top.” Steve leaned down to brush his lips along Bucky’s cheekbone, letting out a please hum at the feel of the other man’s skin. “We’ll have to figure out another way later, but for now, this way works.”

Bucky groaned hoarsely and closed his eyes, tipping his head back against the bed at both the images running through his head – ones of Steve under him, or next to him, or even on top of him like he is now – and the touch of Steve’s mouth to his neck.

The next moments would forever stick out in their minds. Soft kisses were interspersed with giggling and laughter as they stripped each other down to skin. Flailing, bumping, and touching as they reverently pulled the cloth away and dropped it to the floor.

Once they were both bare, the room went silent as they looked their fill. Bucky gently ran his hands up Steve’s sides, loving how his sun-darkened skin looked against the paleness of his Conjux’s. He traced lightly over the visible bumps of Steve’s ribs as he moved them up along the lines of Steve’s torso.

Steve bit his lip and let out a small whimper when Bucky rubbed his thumbs over his nipples, just barely touching him but leaving a feeling like fire burning through his body behind. He’d always known he was sensitive but this sensitive? He didn’t know if he could stand it, and he could only imagine how much more it would be like with both his Mates touching him.

“Shh, doll, just relax.” Bucky practically purred the words as he continued torturing Steve while finding all his erogenous zones. He’d finally relaxed, comfortable enough with what was happening that he was falling back into his niche.

Steve whined, his hands slipping back up onto Bucky’s shoulders so that he had something solid to hold onto. “Bucky!” His voice was a whine as he squirmed against Bucky’s hold on him.

Bucky just smirked up at him in response, running his hands down Steve’s sides to his hips. “We’re lucky that Edythe is working,” He murmured as he gently ran his thumbs across the two small scars on Steve’s hips.

Steve chuckled quietly, shifting around on Bucky’s lap as the older man’s touch tickled lightly. “Now is not the time to talk about your sisters or mine,” He choked out as he dug blunt nails into Bucky’s shoulders as Bucky’s touch trailed down the length of his legs and back up again, moving to the one place he’d been aching for the other to touch.

“True, true,” Bucky murmured, distracted by rubbing the back of his index finger along the patch of roughened red skin at the base of Steve’s penis. A small smile bloomed on his face at the shudder that wracked Steve’s little body and the whine that escaped his lips. Bucky hummed quietly before taking hold of Steve’s hips and raising him up a bit.

“Bucky?” Steve questioned, even as Bucky began to move up the bed.

“We’re gonna get more comfortable.”

Steve nodded and moved up the bed after him, happily settling into the larger Alpha’s lap once Bucky had gotten comfortable leaning back against the wall and their pillows. Once settled, he reached his hand out, curling thin fingers around the shafts of both their erections.

Bucky curled his own fingers around their shafts, interlocking their fingers and lightly squeezing Steve’s hand as he did so. “Ready?” The word was quiet, practically breathed into Steve’s mouth as they pressed their foreheads together.

“Yes.” Steve hissed a breath through his teeth, eyes fluttering back to half-mast as he rolled his hips gently.

Bucky snorted out a laugh before carefully dragging their hands up along their shafts, squeezing lightly at the head. He wrapped his free hand around Steve’s back, tugging the younger Alpha closer to him, drawing their mouths together. He brushed his tongue lightly over Steve’s bottom lip, before pushing the appendage into Steve’s mouth, drawing the younger Alpha’s own into dance as he explored every sweet tasting corner of the smaller man’s mouth.

They continued this way, simply kissing and running their hands lightly over each other, for a while before their pleasure crested, both popping weak knots as they spent all over each other’s chests. Steve collapsed against Bucky’s shoulder, his breathing heavy as he shuddered with the aftershocks of his orgasm. Bucky ran his clean hand down Steve’s back, petting over his spine happily. He relaxed back against the wall, carefully drawing Steve’s legs out of the crouch they were in so that he was comfortable.

Steve hummed quietly as his breathing returned to normal. He took one look at them before breaking out into giggles, “Look at the mess we’ve made.”

Bucky chuckled softly, running his fingers through Steve’s hair. “You wanna clean it up now or later?” He petted lightly over the small scar in Steve’s hair as he waited for the younger man’s answer.

“Later.” Steve yawned and curled closer to Bucky’s chest, body beginning to shiver. The older Alpha just chuckled quietly at how cute he is before rearranging them so that they were laying down. Steve shuddered slightly before Bucky settled a blanket over them. “Sleep now, clean later.”

“Alright,” Bucky murmured in agreement into Steve’s hair as he pressed a kiss to unruly blond hair. “Goodnight.” He tugged Steve closer as they began to drift away into sleep.

#  **~x~**

War was declared in Europe a few years later, and America was staying out of it for now, but both Bucky and Steve knew that America’s isolation wouldn’t last long. Eventually something would draw the distant country into war, and they needed to have plans for when that did happen.

First order of business was whether they would enlist voluntarily or wait until the draft was called. After weeks of arguing and a few days of Steve forcing Bucky out of their bed and onto the small couch in the other room, they agreed that they would enlist together the first Monday after Steve’s birthday after enlistment was called and that Steve would keep trying to get accepted until Bucky left because both knew that Bucky would be going.

So, they waited.

Bucky was drafted in May of 1940.

He’d had the day off from work, and had spent it sitting in the park with Katherine and Alyce as a chaperone for them as they met with their First Mates. Steve, Becca, and Edythe all had work or school, so it was just him and them.

When their dates were over, he followed the two gossiping Omegas as they headed back to their building. He stopped at the mailbox, unlocking it with his key before digging through the envelopes within.

“Bill. Bill. Doctor’s letter. Draft … card.” He blinked, numbly closing the door to the box before removing his keys and heading up to the apartment.

Edythe was in the kitchen when he entered. He waved to her absently as he set the mail on the table, grabbing his draft card. The other Alpha didn’t say anything, but he knew that she was worried about him, even if she didn’t know why he was acting this way.

“I’m just going to go to our room,” Bucky whispered, heading for the room that he and Steve shared. He didn’t both with the lamps, just settled down on the bed to stare at the card in the slowly dimming light while he waited for Steve to return.

Steve returned an hour after it had gotten dark. With hands covered in charcoal and paint, he entered the room, stopping in surprise when he made out Bucky sitting on the bed.

“Buck?” Steve questioned, stepping closer to him. He took the card when it was held out to him, lighting a lamp so that he could read it. “You are hereby – oh Buck.” He threw his arms around the other man.

They stayed like that for a long time before Steve buried his nose into the spot behind Bucky’s ear where his scent was strongest, even to Steve’s lessened senses. “We’ll be okay. We’re gonna get through this.”

#  **~x~**

For the next year, they did everything they could together as they prepared for Bucky to go. Steve had gone as many times as he could to different enlistment posts in an attempt to join up as well – even if it was only for a desk job as administration – but ended up leaving every time labelled 4F.

The night before Bucky was scheduled to leave, he forced Steve to get dressed up, and they took Edythe and the Omegas out to see the Stark Expo. Howard Stark’s failed attempt at a flying car was the highlight of their night.

Bucky only sighed when Steve headed towards the enlistment post but followed him anyway, clutching his uniform hat in his hand. He stopped just outside the building, grabbing Steve’s wrist gently to pull him to a stop.

Steve turned to look at him, tipping his head gently.

“I’m going to wait here. Call for me if you need me,” Bucky told him, squeezing his wrist lightly. He released him when Steve nodded, and stood to lean back against the wall of the building while he waited.

Steve took a deep breath before heading into the building to most likely get rejected again.

He was right, he did get rejected again … but he met B.Dr. Erskine, a scientist working with the military looking for Alphas for their new project. Steve had called Bucky in to listen to the explanation, and after a few minutes of discussion, Steve agreed to join the group that the Doctor had already gathered.

Bucky shipped out the next morning, kiss his sisters and his Conjux goodbye before getting on the train. Steve stayed standing on the platform for almost an hour after he left before he returned to the apartment to pack for his own trip away.

#  **~x~**

He went through the basic training easily enough. He did have to deal with the teasing of the larger Alphas – especially Howard Stark (a relative of his other Conjux perhaps?) – but he dutifully ignored it and continued working on getting better. He couldn’t help being smug when – after an unfortunate incident with a dud grenade – he was the one chosen for the program.

The process was excruciatingly painful, horrendously bright (almost enough to blind him completely), and left him with a bone-deep aching feeling (one he was used to but annoying none-the-less) but he was hopelessly satisfied for hours afterward. The only thing that absolutely ruined his high was the fact that he wasn’t going to be going to war, but to a stage as a way of selling war bonds.

He lasted four months of being pushed around the country by the Colonel before he joined the USO, hoping to at the very least put his monkey-dancing to some good use rather than boring himself to death and wasting everyone else’s time with cheesy skits. At least in the USO he was making the soldiers who were doing the actual fighting happy.

By the time they reached Italy, Steve had just about driven himself around the bend – the men weren’t as glad to see him as they were the girls, which was fine, except that it only made him miss Bucky more.

Peggy was the one to tell him. The other Alpha had seen how much he missed his Conjux, and by the time they reached Italy she couldn’t keep the secret anymore. The 107th had disappeared fighting against Johann Schmidt’s forces of HYDRA and no one was sure that they were still alive, at least no one with power.

Steve knew. Bucky’s Mark on his arm was still as bright as it was the day that they began their Bond. He was aware that Bucky was not well – proven easily by the phantom feelings of pain he’d get occasionally – but he didn’t know where Bucky was, so he’d written them off as just regular soldier things.

After going to see the Colonel and finding out that not only was nothing being done but that he was preparing consolation letters for next of kin for the entire regiment, Steve attempted to slip away on his own. Peggy caught him, and rolling her eyes at him, dragged him away to find Howard so that he could go after his Conjux.

He found him. And everyone else that was missing. They were being kept in a HYDRA compound filled with all kinds of ridiculous weapons. Most of the men were weak from overwork and shit food, but seemed to be in much better condition than he’d expected from the length of time they’d been missing.

Bucky on the other hand… Bucky was barely conscious when Steve found him in Zola’s lab. He’d been mumbling to himself his name, service number, and the names of both Steve and Anthony over and over, barely acknowledging Steve’s presence until the blond had tipped his head and pressed a light kiss to his mouth.

“Fuck, Bucky,” Steve breathed against Bucky’s cheek, his eyes squeezed shut as he took in the new parts of Bucky’s scent. He pulled away and began pulling at the restraints before pulling Bucky to his feet. He clasped a hand against the back of the brunet’s head, “I thought you were dead.”

A weary but still cheeky grin passed over his Conjux’s face, “And I thought you were smaller.”

Steve frowned as he turned his head to the door. “This is no time for jokes, ya jerk.” He grabbed Bucky’s hand and threw his arm over his shoulders. “Time to get the hell outta here.”

On their way out, they were stopped by Schmidt and his lobster face. He had ranted for a long moment before the building began to fall apart because of the self-destruct, leaving them all to run or be blown to smithereens.

Steve – partially carrying Bucky by that point as it was the closest they would be able to get before returning to camp – rounded up the ex-POWs and they began the trek back to Allied territory and camp. Arriving back in camp, Bucky quickly drew the officers’ attention away from Steve’s idiocy before he and the rest of the men were taken away to be checked out.

Bucky appeared later that night at the entry to Steve’s tent, having gotten cleared for duty and permission to share quarters with his Conjux. Steve looked up from his floor pile where he was reading a letter that Alyce had sent before opening his arms for Bucky.

Bucky hurried over to his side, pressing himself against Steve’s chest. “You’re so big now.” He rubbed his cheek against Steve’s jugular, scenting him as he curled himself into Steve’s lap.

Steve chuckled quietly, rubbing his cheek against the top of Bucky’s head in return. “Mm, it’s nice to be able to hold you back properly now.”

Bucky hummed quietly in response before clawing at the new canvas military issue cuffs he’d been given by the medics after seeing the blood that covered his last pair. He tugged them off, staring down at his Marks.

His Marks hadn’t changed much since Steve had last seen them a month before Bucky shipped out. The only change in the Marks had nothing to do with the fact that the skin beneath had been rubbed raw and bruised during the time that Bucky had spent in that hellhole.

The colors of his Marks had sharpened, changing the black, blues, red, and white of his Marks into much brighter shades (but that could just be Steve finally seeing in color). His left wrist proudly stated that he was Conjux to ‘Anthony Edward Stark’ with Anthony’s Symbol of a 2-inch wide blue circle containing an upside-down triangle below it. His wrist showed that he was Steve’s Conjux, plainly written out in Steve’s careful loopy handwriting while the 2-inch image of a star surrounded by rings of red, blue, and white stared up at him.

Steve drug his fingers through Bucky’s hair gently, even as he pulled the cuff hiding Bucky’s Mark off his right wrist with his teeth. ‘James Buchanan Barnes’ was written across Steve’s pale freckled skin in Bucky’s hurried scrawl over a white circle with a red star inside, both parts outlined in a light gray to separate them from the pale of Steve’s skin.

Steve tugged Bucky as close as possible, shoving them down amongst the pillows and blankets that made up his little nest until they were comfortably cocooned into their own little world. “It’s okay,” he whispered into brunet hair, hugging him close, “You’re here with me. You’re here.” He kept whispering the words over and over as Bucky began to fall asleep against him.

#  **~x~**

Just over a year later, a mission of the Howling Commandoes would go wrong, and Bucky would fall from a HYDRA train in the Italian mountains. Steve, in his grief, wouldn’t even look at his Mark and would be unknowing that it was still as bright and full of _life_ as the last time they’d shared them in that tent.

New information would come in, and with it a new mission, and then they were off to a HYDRA base to take a final stand against the Red Skull.

Fighting.

Fire.

The Red Skull heading for the Valkyrie that Steve knew was full of enough explosives to destroy most of the Eastern Seaboard.

Going after him.

Fighting.

The Tesseract. Good-bye, Schmidt.

Have to go down. Have to go down.

Going down.

Cold.

Rushing.

Wet.

Dark.

Sleep.

#  **~x~**

Light.

Sound.

Stillness.

Steve opened his eyes to a white ceiling with a three-prong ceiling fan spinning lazily around like the ones he’d seen in State-side hospitals while visiting his Mom or the sick children before he went overseas.

Noise was the first thing that he noticed around him and when he tuned his hearing to what the noise was, confusion sparked up in him. The noise was a small radio on a table across the room that was playing the commentary to a baseball game; a baseball game from May of 1941 that he and Bucky had attended in person as part of their time together just before Bucky shipped out.

Immediately he knew something was up. There was something going on here. This was not 1941. How much time had passed since he’d put the Valkyrie down? How long had he been gone?

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, turning his head to look out the open window next to his bed. It looked like summer outside, which was ridiculous seeing as it had been the middle of March when he put that damned plane into the ocean, and there was no way his new metabolism and healing would keep him unconscious for four months.

The door opened, and a young lady dressed like a WAC stepped into the room, smoothing out the khaki tie around her neck.

“Good morning,” She greeted, stepping closer to the end of the bed as she looked down at her watch. “Or should I say afternoon.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”

The game continued its plays in the background, and he narrowed his eyes slightly before turning to her again. “Where am I really?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“The game.” He said abruptly, turning his head slightly. “It’s from May nineteen-forty-one. I know ‘cause I was there.” He rose from the bed and moved to stand in front of her. “Now, I’m going to ask you again; where am I?”

“Captain Rogers.”

“Who are you‽”

The door opened again, and two men dressed in black stepped in behind her. A quick move from him and they were thrown through the wall with him following them out through the hole.

“Captain Rogers, wait!” The woman stopped at the hole as he pushed open the metal doors across the larger room and made his escape to the outside world.

He could hear her making an announcement, and he moved to flee from the building. Once outside, he simply followed the road away.

And ended up in Times Square. Or at least, what he assumed was Times Square based on the sheer number of ads around him.

“At ease soldier,” A voice remarked from behind him, and he turned to find a tall African-American man with an eyepatch approaching. “Look, I’m sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”

“Break what?” Steve questioned, pressing his bare wrists against his thighs. He had a bad feeling about this.

“You’ve been asleep Cap. For almost seventy years.”

He couldn’t believe it. There was no way. This had to be a joke. There was no way anyone, not even him, could survive the cold of the Arctic waters for that long. There was just no way.

“You gonna be okay?”

Steve’s mind flashes to Peggy and Bucky’s military file. “Yeah,” he rubbed his wrists against the smooth cotton of his pants. “Yeah, I just … I had a date.”

The man chuckled softly, shaking his head slightly and probably jumping to the wrong conclusions. “Come with me, Captain. We have much to discuss.”

The man – Nick Fury as he’d introduced himself – sat him down in the back of one of the black vehicles that had pulled up to block them off from civilians while they had their conversation. As they drove to wherever they were going, Fury explained what was going on.

It was 2012. He’d been asleep for almost 70 years, until three weeks ago, when a team that had been charged with finding the Valkyrie – and him but that went unsaid – for the past seventy years had found him just off the coast of Greenland. He’d been sent back to New York and defrosted before one of the scientists got the idea for the ploy back at the New York Office and they shoved him into the room as an attempt to keep him calm while they explained what was going on – to which Fury replied, that as a former soldier himself he suspected that Steve would have preferred for everything to have just been laid out straight for him (which was true).

Now Director Fury was giving him a choice; either he could go away to the rehabilitation facility in Maine called the Retreat which was specially designed for ‘resyncing’ agents, or he could stay at HQ and get taught there. Not wanting to be shuffled off again, Steve decided to stay at HQ and see how it went.

#  **~x~**

Two weeks passed Steve by. After a flippant comment made by one of his tutors in modern technology about Bucky, Steve had foregone speaking to anyone. An overheard conversation a few days after the first incident about no one knowing the identity of his other Conjux and how that must feel for him, had him shutting himself up in his rooms to get away from insensitive comments from Agents who had no idea what they were talking about.

He refused to leave his rooms except to go to the cafeteria to get food and down to the gym to run, preferring to teach himself how to make things work. He wouldn’t suffer to be around them again until he’d calmed down.

It was one of the harder days for him that brought the light he needed in this dark future he’d found himself in. He’d spent most of the morning reading up on the first ten years after the end of the war. The beginning part of the afternoon had been spent staring at the ceiling of his room from his bed before he’d moved on to working out on the floor.

His thoughts had just taken a dark turn as he settled himself on the edge of his bed to take a break when a voice interrupted his musing, “Aunt Katie always told us that her brother was a stubborn asshole.”

He whipped his head around to look at the man standing in his doorway. He was gorgeous – which was an odd thought, seeing as both of his Mates were supposedly dead and he shouldn’t be feeling this way about anyone but them; dark brown hair that was ruffled like he’d been running his hands through it, brown eyes like whiskey full of mirth, toned body hugged by fitted shirts and suit pants with a jacket that made his shoulders look broad as all hells, and smooth mile-long golden skin.

“Well, Katie was generally right,” Steve replied, narrowing his eyes at him.

The man chuckled, taking a step into the room. “Anthony Stark. Fury called to see if I could help you get settled in, in a way that his Agents seemed to have failed to.”

It couldn’t be. There was no way. It didn’t make any sense. There was no way that their Mark would be someone born almost a century after they were. There was… He’d… How was he to tell Anthony that he was the reason they’d lost their Third? How do you apologize to someone you barely know and thought dead, for being the reason that their Conjux was dead?

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispered hoarsely, gaze dropping away from the other man’s. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Anthony blinked at him and stepped further into the room, “What for?”

“I lost him. I lost Bucky,” Steve whispered back, clutching at Bucky’s Mark hidden behind the thick leather wristbands that had replaced the ones he’d come out of the ice with as he dropped onto his back on the bed.

“Oh Cor,” Anthony breathed, closing the door behind him before coming to sit next to Steve on the bed. “Cor, that wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I should have been faster,” Steve croaked. “I should have grabbed him.”

Anthony took a deep breath before setting a hand on Steve’s knee lightly, “How much have you read about the new developments regarding Marks, Steven?”

“Steve,” Steve told him before answering the question, “Some. Mostly about the colors and art of Marks. Then I couldn’t stomach to be reminded.”

“Tony,” Anthony replied, before continuing, “Then some things need to be explained to you.” He grabbed Steve around the wrists, grip tight around the bands on his wrists. “Sit up, and I’ll try to explain.”

Steve nodded numbly before sitting up against the headboard of his bed. He stared at Tony as the other man tapped a finger against his lips in thought.

“Have you looked at your Marks since waking up?” Tony questioned suddenly, turning to look at his wrists.

“No. I – I didn’t want to see them gone.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment before he moved to his own wrists, undoing the snaps that held his cuffs in place before thrusting his wrists out so that Steve could see.

Steve’s eyes were immediately drawn to his own Mark on Tony’s left wrist. It looked identical to the one he’d seen on Bucky’s wrists, barring the fact that the colors were a bit darker so that the Mark would stand out against Tony’s skin. Other than the shades it was exactly the same as the Mark he’d seen on Bucky’s sun-tanned skin.

Slowly, his eyes turned to Bucky’s Mark on Tony’s skin. It looked the same as he’d last seen it on his own skin, with two distinct differences. The gray outline of the circle as well as the final ‘es’ had scarred over and the color of the Mark looked like it had been sucked out until only white remained.

“He’s still alive, sol. It’s faded, not scarred. It means he’s alive,” Tony whispered, curling his fingers around Steve’s. “He’s still alive, Steve. We just need to find.”

“We just need to find him,” Steve repeated on a breath, staring blankly at Tony’s faded Mark.

“We just need to find him,” Tony agreed, squeezing his hands gently.

#  **~x~**

Two more weeks would pass with Tony coming in at least once a day to visit or calling him on the phone that had been one of the first things that Tony had taught him about. Books would be recommended by the brilliant British AI that his Conjux had created and he’d spend most of his time either reading them or working out at the gym while listening to new music that had been recommended to him from multiple sources. And if he wasn’t doing either of those things, he was sitting in his room, drawing.

His interactions with the other Agents were limited to his current Supervisory Agent – an older man named Coulson – and the other Agents under his control – specifically Agents Romanova and Barton – as well as a few conversations with Director Fury and his second, Deputy Director Hill. His contact with the outside world was limited to Tony, his doctors, and the cashiers at the craft stores he visited when he needed more supplies.

Steve was in the middle of staring at a sketch he’d begun of Bucky, sadly stroking his thumb over the edge of the page where there wasn’t any charcoal, when a rapid knocking started on his door. He jumped in surprise, having been so caught up in memories that he hadn’t heard anyone approach. He carefully set down his sketchbook and charcoal pencil before getting up and going to answer the door.

“We have a major problem,” was what greeted him when he opened the door for the redhead standing in the hall. “Coulson needs to see us.” She grabbed his wrist and began dragging him down the corridor to the conference room that was often used by those of Coulson’s troop.

“Nat? What’s going on?” He questioned as he followed her down the hall.

“Not here. Coulson knows more,” Natasha replied as they passed a Level-One Agent, who definitely wouldn’t have the clearance for this. Steve sighed but smartly kept silent until they reached the conference room.

Coulson was pacing back and forth along the end of the room, fingers tapping out a static message as he attempted to get his emotions back under his steely control.

“Phil? What’s going on?” Steve questioned tentatively, settling down into one of the chairs at the other end of the table.

“You know that Cint is one of my Conjux,” Phil started, once everyone was seated around the table. “What we never told anyone at SHIELD other than Fury was that we have three Marks, the last one having appeared within the past year or so, but three none-the-less.

“Last month, Fury had me send Clint to a research facility in New Mexico. I got a call this morning from Fury that the facility had been attacked, and that some of the personnel were killed, and some were taken. Clint was among those taken.”

“What do your Marks have to do with that?” One of the younger Agents – Skye perhaps? – questioned with a tilt of her head. “And how can one just suddenly appear?”

“The appearance is easy. If someone is dead for long enough, their Marks are reset, so it seems that their Fourth died at some point and was brought back,” Steve replied, having read about the phenomenon the night before.

“Our new Mark is for Pietro Orel Maximoff,” Phil replied, rubbing his face with his hands before speaking again, “and our other Mark was hidden, but it is visible now. Our hidden Mark is for Loki Laufeyson, and he is the man who attacked the facility.”

Silence. The room was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop for a long time before Steve asked, “What happened at the facility?”

“The facility was mainly researching different energy forms. Dr. Selvig – the head researcher – was looking into a type of energy that could be used to travel between possible worlds. Fury had been called in after a report that Selvig’s energy form was causing disturbances.

“Soon after Fury arrived, the energy went out of control and a portal opened for a man dressed in armour and holding a scepter. He also had magic like we haven’t seen before.

“The scepter was another magical item that we couldn’t be prepared for. At a single touch of the scepter’s power, it can turn anyone into Loki’s puppet.”

Steve frowned, tilting his head. “Don’t Marks make it so that Conjux can’t subjugate each other?”

“Exactly, which is why this is worrying,” Phil answered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Either Clint is planning something, or something else is going on that we just don’t know about. For now, only those in this room, Fury, and Tony –” He gave Steve a sharp look that promised if anyone else found out, there would be hell to pay, “– are to know what is going on. We need to figure out what is going on here.”

A week later they did find out.

Fury had called for the Avengers Initiative to be activated and so Natasha and the others were sent out to collect those who were not close by. Natasha went to India to get Dr. Bruce Banner, a Gamma Physicist with a rage problem who was both a ‘brilliant scientist and giant green rage monster’ according to Tony. Sky left to check on a friend of hers and to check any of Clint’s bolt-holes that she knew of in the event that the Archer had left any messages behind for his Alpha or the team. Steve, on the other hand, was left to call Tony and relay everything he could while trying to be discrete and figure out for himself what the hells was going on.

Tony arrived after only an hour, the bracers for his case-suit wrapped around his wrists and the suit in hand. The Omega was calm as he set the case on the table and moved to wrap Phil up in a comforting hug, pheromones being pumped out of his skin in hopes of calming the worried Alpha down.

Phil let out a shuddering breath, tension dropping from his shoulders as he wrapped his arms around the Omega in turn. He pressed his forehead against Tony’s shoulder and focused on his breathing to keep calm in the wake of his Omega disappearing.

“We’ll get him back,” Steve remarked into the silence of the room. “We’ll get them both back.”

#  **~x~**

They’d barely had time to settle into their new temporary quarters – Tony had simply grinned at the Agent setting up rooms before climbing into Steve’s lap – before they were called into action because Loki was being a menace in Germany. Tony was the first one to head out, though Steve still beat him to the square.

After a long bantering conversation between Tony and Loki – both Omegas attempting to figure each other out – Loki was taken into SHIELD custody to see if Phil could get him to talk. He’d seemed to go quite willingly enough after Steve gave both Omegas his I’m-so-disappointed-in-you-I’m-Captain-America face.

What they hadn’t been counting on was Thor.

The other Godling broke into the jet and grabbed Loki, dragging him away before inciting an argument between the two of them. Tony had merely sighed loudly into the comms before going after them.

In Steve’s opinion, it took much too long for Tony to return with their wayward Godlings, but he didn’t say anything because he had a feeling that it wasn’t either Omegas’ fault but that of the Alpha Godling. He sat back down on the bench in the back of the quinjet and settled in for the ride back to the Helicarrier.

When they got back, Loki was locked into the Hulk Room until Phil could gather himself enough to go and see him. Thor, in the meantime, was taken to see Fury so that the one-eyed Beta could yell at him for nearly costing them Loki. Everyone else went to join Phil in the conference room: Steve settling into one chair and after Tony exited the suit, he was pulled into Steve’s lap; Natasha dropped down into the chair next to them, settling between Dr. Banner and the pair; and the other Agents settled into the seats across the table.

“I’ll go speak with him. Firstly, Nat, I want you to go and talk with him,” Phil murmured, staring at the screen that projected the cell’s camera where he could see Loki seemingly staring back at him. “Study him, figure out what you can, but try not to engage him in words. I’ll speak to him later today.”

Natasha went in to see Loki, but the Omega said nothing to her, only studied the Neutral carefully before going back to staring at the door she’d come in. She sighed quietly and settled into a chair near the glass dome where the Godling was being kept.

After an hour of sitting in silence with Loki, Natasha stood up from her chair and moved to exit the room. With a final look at him, she pushed open the door and exited, going back to the conference room to report on her findings.

“Well?” Steve questioned, looking at her as she entered the room.

“Thor, I have one question before I answer. What color are your brother’s eyes?” Natasha asked, looking to the larger blond as he settled in across from Steve and Tony.

“Green. Loki’s eyes are green.”

Natasha clicked her tongue before dropping into the free chair, “Well that answers that then. Currently, Loki’s eyes are an odd blue, much like the energy source Dr. Selvig was studying, and that on its own points me to the idea that something else is going on. The fact that he’s quiet, too quiet for the proclaimed silver-tongued God of Lies and Mischief also adds to that.”

Phil let out a deep breath, and was about to speak when an explosion rocked the Helicarrier. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Clint,” He hissed through his teeth, sighing quietly. “Go and attempt to wrangle our wayward Agents. You will let Loki do what is needed.”

Steve just nodded before dragging Tony away to see what they could do to fix the engine. Natasha flipped herself up into the vent that Clint would usually be hiding in before going to track the Archer down. Dr. Banner went to go find somewhere he could sit out while Thor went to watch his brother.

An hour later, and the fight was over with most things fixed or dealt with. The Helicarrier had been stabilized again. They’d gotten Clint ‘back’. They’d also gotten some of the other wayward Agents back.

Loki escaped during the madness, and during his escape had done a few things that made the Team worried about what his mental state was going to be like. He’d antagonised both Thor and Bruce – which caused the scientist to transform – which got the two fighting and Loki released. After locking the two combatants inside the Hulk Room, he’d pressed the button which dropped the cage from the aircraft and headed for the ground. Loki had also materialized his scepter and stabbed it through the muscular portion of Phil’s shoulder when the man half-heartedly attempted to stop him.

The wound wasn’t fatal so with a sigh of relief, the Team settled down to wait for both Phil and Clint to be checked over by Medical and released. A nurse came out to get them after twenty minutes to take them to Clint, who was resting in one of the rooms with some ice for his aching head, seeing as Natasha had to punch him to get the lingering effects of Loki’s scepter out of his head.

The man in question frowned at her in annoyance when she entered, before he settled back against the fluffy pillows behind him with a soft groan. He ran his fingers through his hair, studying the group carefully before shifting to get comfortable.

“You going to tell us what’s going on?” Natasha asked, settling down on the edge of the bed.

“We should wait for Phil,” Clint answered, turning the ice pack over and setting it back against the top of his head.

With a sigh, they all settled in to wait for Phil to be released from surgery where they’d been putting his muscles back together. It was only another half-hour before Phil was released to the room, but he was still out from the anaesthesia, thought the nurse told them that he’d received an antidote and should wake up in a few minutes. Another twenty minutes, and Phil was awake enough for the conversation that needed to happen.

“Everything comes back to the moment that Loki fell from the Rainbow bridge,” Clint began, biting his lip as he attempted to get everything into words.

He then went on to explain how after falling, Loki had end up in the hold of the Mad Titan – “Thanos, I think he called him.” – and had his mind rearranged to suit the needs of his captor. His orders had been to come to Earth and retrieve the Tesseract – “I don’t know what he’d need with that glowing piece of shite but…” – which was why the facility was attacked. He told them about how Loki had killed the agents and scientists before coming into close enough range for their Marks to connect and recalibrate Loki’s brain. Otherwise, he never would have done so. He told them about how Thanos still had some hold over Loki’s brain, enough to know what was going on around him, which is why they kept up the charade that Loki had taken over his mind. Since then, Loki had been half-heartedly getting ready to invade the planet, so that it would seem as if he was continuing with what Thanos wanted, but they had plans in place which would break all of Thanos’ hold and allow Loki to remain on Earth with them.

Once he’d finished explaining, Phil told them what happened in the Hulk Room. How Thor and Loki had gotten into a loud argument that had set Bruce off. Phil had no choice but to let Loki out so that they could contain the Hulk who Thor had been fighting to keep in the room. After they had been locked in, Loki materialized his scepter and armour. Phil told them that for a long moment Loki’s eyes had been green, and he’d come close enough to touch before he’d backed off again, visibly allowing his eyes to return to the light blue they’d been. He told them how Loki’s voice had been in his head as he apologized – “He said that he was sorry it had to be this way, but that it was the only way.” – for what he was about to do before he stabbed him in thankfully one of the only non-fatal parts of the human torso. Phil remembers being awake for long enough to watch as Loki pushed the button that would drop the Hulk Cage to land before he blacked out.

With all the explanations out of the way, they began to plan as they headed back to New York, to where Loki was going to hold his grand finale.

The battle itself only took a few hours. Chitauri were killed and thrown about by all, but they just kept coming through the portal. Natasha had the ability to close the portal, but Tony told them to wait.

“Tony, what are you doing?” Steve questioned, ducking another blast of whatever energy the Chitauri weapons put out.

“I’ve got a nuke coming in,” Tony responded, a blur of red and gold as he shot off away from the city. “And I know exactly where to put it.”

“Tony.”

“Sol, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Steve could only bite his lip before telling him to do it and losing himself in fighting off the remaining Chitauri, who were unfortunate enough to still be close by. He’d already lost one Conjux. He didn’t know if he could stand to lose the other.

Steve spared enough time to look up at his Match as he flew past with the nuke in his grasp. Once that moment was over, he was back to shoving his shield through the weak points on Chitauri armour.

Clint’s commentary on Tony’s journey, just managed to keep Steve focused on trying to keep himself calm and kill the Chitauri that were still wandering around.

He stared up at the sky after Tony disappeared, waiting to see what was going to happen.

“I can close it!” Natasha called urgently into the comms.

After a long moment, Steve gave the order for her to close it and turned his attention away from the sky.

“He’s not slowing down,” Thor remarked suddenly, swinging Mjolnir in preparation to go after the falling mass of limp red and gold metal.

Before he could do so, a large green mass slammed into the falling red and gold figure, slowing down his descent as they crashed into the side of a building and slid down it, a rain of glass and stone falling after them.

Steve immediately sprinted over to where Hulk was settling Tony on the cement. Thor ripped the faceplate off, and they stared down into the calm face of Tony Stark.

With a growl Steve fought to get his gloves off, pulling at the fingers with his teeth before getting both pieces of blue fabric off and throwing them away from him. He carefully brushed his fingers against Tony’s cheek, avoiding a rather large bruise that was beginning to show, as the others moved around them, pulling the functionless suit away.

“Tony. Come on, Tony,” Steve murmured, feeling the spark of his Mark-magic reaching out to Tony’s. “Wake up, Bambi. Let me see those brown eyes of yours.”

With a gasp, Tony’s eyes opened, and he looked up at Steve with wide blown golden-brown eyes. “Told you I’d be okay, Sol,” He breathed, shifting to sit up.

Steve let out a harsh laugh before wrapping his arms around Tony’s shoulders and pulling him up out of the dead suit.

Everyone on the ground gathered around the pair to check over the Omega – surreptitiously in some cases but none-the-less – before they headed back to Stark Tower to gather Loki from where Hulk had slammed him around the Penthouse. After collecting the now green-eyed god, they headed back to the Helicarrier so Clint and Loki could be returned to their Alpha.

Tony and Steve – after making sure that everyone else had been situated where they needed to be – headed back to the Tower to start renovations on the destroyed portions, renovations that had the others in mind to fill the empty floors. Clint and Loki remained under the watchful eyes of Phil as they each healed from the battle. Bruce joined them at the Tower after Tony offered him a safe space to do his science in peace without the military insanity that followed him around. Natasha went back to work undercover. Thor took the Tesseract and news of Loki back to his parents in Asgard, with plans to return.

#  **~x~**

Steve and Tony were laid out in bed together when Tony brought up a subject that Steve himself had been putting off.

“My Heat is coming up,” Tony murmured into the t-shirt below his head, rubbing his cheek against Steve’s pec lightly. He had his arms wrapped around Steve’s middle, fingers slipped under Steve’s clothing to touch at sun-touched skin warmed by their closeness.

Steve squeezed him lightly before twisting until he could look into the Omega’s face. “Do you want me there?” He asked quietly, fingers tucking under the waistband of Tony’s sweatpants.

“Yes,” Tony whispered into the skin of Steve’s neck as he shifted and tucked his face against the glands there.

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Steve asked, staring up at the ceiling.

“I don’t want to Bond without Bucky,” Tony replied, tugging lightly at the hem of Steve’s shirt. He was nervous about what Steve would say.

“I don’t want to leave him out either, Bambi, so if you want to wait, we can wait.” Steve pressed a kiss to the top of the Omega’s head, rubbing his cheek against soft hair once he’d gotten the Omega settled again. “We’ll wait for Bucky.”

#  **~x~**

Almost a year and a half after the Battle of New York, and fifteen months of living together with the rest of the Avengers – including Loki who wasn’t currently considered an Avenger until his medical went through, and Phil who was the SHIELD Liaison for the Avengers Initiative – and the crazy that came with them, Tony was preparing for the surgery which would remove the Arc Reactor from his chest. In between work for SHIELD and SI, Tony’d been busy redesigning the AR unit to be fully installed into every suit, as well as creating jewelry – shaped like the Arc Reactor and his Mark – which would regulate his body temperature after the removal, as it was expected that his body would not regulate the heat well for the first half-year after his surgery.

He had the idea of what he wanted, but he wasn’t sure how to get the heat output that he needed. Tapping his fingers against the work top, he turned in his seat to look at Steve who was sitting on the puffy couch kitty-cornered to the main workstation, drawing in a new sketchbook that Tony had given him for his birthday. One look at Steve, and he knew exactly how to make it work. With a quick recalculation and redesign, he ran a quick test before sending the new jewelry off to production.

With that finished, he got up from his stool and moved to sit next to Steve. Steve immediately and absentmindedly raised and wrapped an arm around Tony’s shoulders, drawing the Omega into his side. Tony looked down to see what the other was drawing, a smile spreading across his face when he saw the subject of the art on the page.

Drawn on the page by Steve’s deft hand were the three of them – Bucky, Steve, and himself – curled together around a small set of twin bundles.

Part of the reason for this new decision to get his AR unit removed was for his own health and wellbeing, but it mostly came down to children. He wanted to be able to have kids with his Mates, but children as he was at the moment, was not recommended with the diminished lung capacity, overworked cardiac system, and foreign body he suffered under. He wanted kids with both his Mates; little blond rascals running around with faux innocence, and little brunet monsters bouncing around asking questions that drive everyone crazy.

“I can’t wait for that to become a reality,” Tony whispered as he pressed his nose to the side of Steve’s neck, breathing in the light pine scent that clung to the Alpha’s clothes and rubbed off on his skin.

“It will. Don’t worry Bambi,” Steve replied quietly, tipping his head to kiss the top of Tony’s head. “Did you get everything finished?”

“Mm,” Tony hummed happily, rubbing his cheek against Steve’s shoulder. “My set will be ready by Thursday and then I go in for surgery on Friday.”

“You’ve had your shot?” Steve questioned, looking to a case on the worktop.

“Not yet. Bruce and Helen want me to take it later tonight, closer to when I actually go into surgery,” Tony answered, nuzzling closer to Steve’s chest.

Tony with the help of Bruce and Helen Cho – a scientific and medical friend of both men – had reverse-engineered enough of the Super Soldier Serum from a sample of Steve’s blood for the surgery to be possible. Tony just had to take five shots of it – four before the surgery at weekly intervals and one just after he’d been anaesthetized for the surgery.

Already the changes from the serum were visible in the Omega. The gray that had been appearing slowly in Tony’s hair was virtually gone already. The line and wrinkles on his face had smoothed out, and slight freckles had begun to bloom over the skin under his eyes. He seemed years younger and much happier about it.

“Alright, perhaps a nap then?” Steve questioned, cuddling Tony close to him as he closed the sketchbook and set it away under the couch.

“Mm.” Tony hummed in reply as Steve shifted them around until they were laying down on one of several fluffy pillows kept on the couch. He curled against Steve’s chest and cuddled down under the fleece blanket that Steve wrapped around them.

Steve hummed a song quietly as he rubbed his hand up and down Tony’s back. He knew that Tony would make it through his surgery okay, if only because he refused to give up the search for Bucky until they found him and brought him home.

“Sleep well, Bambi.”

The next week passed with Tony trying to get as much work as he could finish finished before he had to go in for his surgery and the consequent bedrest that would come with it.

Thursday, Tony got his jewelry from R&D in a small flat box that was sent up with Pepper when she came to visit before she had to leave for a conference in Paris. He grinned when he pulled the pendant and cuffs from the box. He eagerly traded out his old cuffs for these new ones, which would both warm him and power a new set of emergency gauntlets. He pulled the pendant down over his head, laying it out next to Steve’s new dog-tags. He switched them on to make sure that they were working and grinned when they began to heat up.

A soft purr left him as the heat settled into his body. He pouted at Pepper when the Beta laughed at him from her place on the other end of the couch. He curled his body up in the free space before grabbing one of the many fleece blankets that Steve had been leaving around for him.

That was something Tony still wasn’t used to; Steve – or any Alpha really – caring for him enough to leave him soft things or petting him when they were close together. Rhodey, even though he was a Beta, had done that while he was around but after they’d graduated and Rhodey’d joined the military that had slowed down to almost a stop due to the distance between them.

He curled up in his blanket happily, humming quietly to himself as he rested his head in Pepper’s lap. She cooed at him, dainty fingers coming down to pass through his hair as they settled in for their visit.

Friday came quietly; Tony woke curled up against Steve’s chest under a blanket with the Alpha’s arms wrapped tight around him. He couldn’t contain the happy sound from his chest as he nuzzled into Steve’s neck.

Steve rumbled quietly before blue eyes opened slightly to look at him. “Good morning, Bambi.”

“Good morning, Sol,” Tony replied, kissing him chastely before settling back against the Alpha’s chest.

“Are you ready for today?”

“Mm.”

Steve sighed quietly at the non-answer, but didn’t comment. He just lightly kissed Tony’s forehead and hugged him close to the broad of his chest. He cuddled Tony close, humming a tune softly into Tony’s hair as he rubbed his hand along Tony’s spine, massaging out the kinks and knots there.

They’d spend the rest of the day in bed, just being together until they had to leave for the hospital at seven that night. It would be a quiet day, just the two of them.

Steve fingered the dog-tags around Tony’s neck after they’d moved into a more comfortable position an hour before they had to get up. “I wish I could have given you the originals.”

Steve’s original dog-tags had been left behind during that final mission, just like all missions where he wore his new suit. Peggy had taken them, but they’d been lost in her many moves around the world, hence the reason that Steve needed new ones.

“It was impossible, Sol. And I like these ones much more anyways.”

“Why?”

“You could have just not bothered getting new ones, but you went ahead and did so. Then you go me to mark them for you before you gave them to me.”

Steve grinned down at him and lightly kissed his forehead before settling in. He spent the next while petting and kissing Tony, contenting them both with soft touches and gentle touches.

When it was time to go, Steve bundled Tony into a pair of warm cotton pants, a long-sleeved Henley, and a fluffy fleece sweater of his own that hung huge on Tony’s lithe frame. He packed up one of the fleece blankets that he’d been hoarding as well as one of the soft plush toys that he’d secretly ordered offline to give to Tony as another courting gift – the others being his dog-tags and the multitude of fleece things that he’d ordered for his Omega Conjux.

He curled Tony into his arms as Happy drove them to the hospital. He pressed a kiss to the side of Tony’s head and sighed quietly as he tucked his head into Tony’s neck. Tony just patted his thigh lightly before pressing closer to him.

It didn’t take long after they arrived for Tony to be called to get ready. Steve followed him back to his room, biting his lip and clutching their bag tightly in his hands. He settled won into the long chair near the window while Tony went into the bathroom to change into the scrub pants that had been left for him by the nurses as was required for the surgery.

Tony returned, clutching his folded clothes to his chest. He set them on the little table by the bathroom before jumping up onto the bed, getting comfortable for the time being. He looked at Steve who was staring out the window, watching as the blond stared off over the top of the neighboring building.

“I’ll see you when I get out,” Tony told him, leaning forward to grab his hand. He pressed the pendant, his cuffs, and Steve’s dog-tags into his hand, curling his fingers around the items.

Steve huffed out a deep breath and nodded, tucking the jewelry into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt. He looked up at a knock on the door and called the person inside.

A nurse stepped inside the room, coming to a stop just inside the doorway. “Alright Mr. Stark, we’re almost ready for you,” The nurse greeted, his dark hair pulled back from his face in a loose bun. “It should be about another five minutes then we’ll come get you for surgery.”

“Thank you,” Tony replied, settling down on his bed to wait.

The waiting time passed with the two conversing quietly about what Tony had been able to find on Bucky so far – which was limited to seemingly improbable sightings of the man every twenty years or so, with the last one being in 1992 where someone claimed they’d seen him in downtown Reno.

Both looked up as the nurses entered to take Tony away to the operating room. Steve made a soft noise before going to Tony’s side. He leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to the Omega’s mouth before standing back to let the nurses prepare him to leave.

“I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” Tony told him as the nurses wheeled him out of the room. He waved over his shoulder to Steve as they exited.

Steve smiled weakly back at his Conjux before settling back down into the chair to wait. He pulled his sketchbook out of their back before turning his attention to the street outside the window.

Eight and a half hours later, Steve looked up as the door opened and Tony was wheeled back into the room. He set his sketchbook aside and watched as the nurses settled him in his bed.

The first nurse from before, stepped up to his side and waited with him until the others had left the room before he began to explain, “Mr. Stark will most likely wake up for a few moments in a few hours. Try to get him to drink something. We’ll be back to check on him at six. Keep him warm and comfortable. If you need anything, Mr. Rogers, anything at all, please don’t hesitate to buzz.”

Steve simply nodded before moving to Tony’s side, digging the jewelry out of his pocket as he moved. He easily lifted Tony’s head before pulling the two necklaces down around his neck. The cuffs were absently set down on the table next to the bed with the pitcher of water as he carefully made sure that the necklaces weren’t touching the bandages. Steve lightly petted over the pendant before pressing a light kiss to the unconscious man’s forehead.

After making sure that the blankets were covering him as much as possible, Steve went back to their bag to get the fleece one he’d brought with them. He stepped back to the bed, throwing it over top of the hospital blankets and making sure that was it wrapped around the visible sections of Tony’s slim body. He smoothed it down before studying Tony’s face for a long moment.

He still couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have both his brunets, though one was missing. A shiver went down his spine at a phantom breeze before he moved to settle down on the cot along the wall at the foot of Tony’s bed. He flopped down on his side facing Tony, staring at the other man for a long time before he slowly fell into Morpheus’ arms.

#  **~x~**

Almost a year of no major catastrophes and the entire team was busy planning a ‘Yay-No-Major-Apocalyptic-Events-Occurred!’ Party in celebration of there not being a need for the whole team at one time for almost a year (the fight between the Avengers and Dr. Doom – who in the opinion of Tony was a Fantastic Four problem anyway as he was the soulmate for Reid and Susan – didn’t count as a major event because the idiot set himself on fire by accident almost immediately after they arrived.) They were all excited and anticipating celebrating a whole year of no-craziness – which was promptly ruined by the attack against Director Fury in downtown New York.

Getting a call from the landlady of the apartment building that housed one of the team’s escape houses was not what Steve was expecting as he started suiting up. As soon as he’d greeted her, she began chiding him for leaving his music on too loud. He frowned before assuring her that he’d be right back to turn it off. He stared at the phone in silence for a long moment after he’d hung up before telling the team where he was going, and pulling his regular clothes on over his uniform.

When he got to the apartment, loud music was playing from the record player in the corner of the room and Fury was draped across the armchair next to it.

After a five-minute conversation filled with more secrets than the entirety of the world’s governments, a distinct pop sounded, and red bloomed across the Director’s white shirt.

Steve immediately looked to where the shot had come from, and after making sure that the Director would be fine in the company of the Agent living next door, climbed out the window to go after the shooter.

What he hadn’t expected was the masked metal-armed man that he found on the roof of the building across the way, who caught the retractable shield that Steve threw at him in his metal hand like he was catching a ball.

They stared at each other for a minute that felt like an eternity before the other man dropped the shield to the gravel of the roof and disappeared over the side of the building. Steve called the shield back to him as he headed over cautiously. Looking over he found nothing, not even a trace of the mystery man.

With nothing, Steve returned to follow Fury to the hospital. He stared at the thumb drive he’d been given by the Director before he’d been shot as he climbed the stairs up to the Director’s floor where he found Natasha and Clint waiting for him in the waiting room.

He subtly handed the drive over to Natasha as he walked past to stare at the doors to the Operating rooms. He waited for long enough to get the news before heading back to the tower, stopping to get Tony’s favourite coffee on the way back.

The looks he saw upon entering the common room stopped him in his tracks. Every one of his teammates looked shell-shocked and terrified.

“What?” He questioned, stepping up to Tony’s side and settling on the arm of the Omega’s armchair.

“We looked through the drive you gave Nat,” Phil stated, his fingers clutching at the napes of Clint and Loki’s necks as they sat next to his legs where he was settled in the other armchair.

“And?”

“HYDRA is still around,” Tony answered quietly, skittishly grabbing at Steve’s sleeve as he took the coffee from his Conjux with his free hand.

“How.” Steve couldn’t even muster up the energy to make it a question.

“SHIELD. The Director found evidence that HYDRA has been a part of SHIELD since the start,” Tony answered, sipping at his coffee as he got his thoughts together. “Dad and Aunt Peggy kept Zola close after you captured him under the orders of Colonel Phillips. He seems to have started recruiting again once he reached America, directly under the noses of the Founders.”

“What are they trying to do now?”

A long silence spread through the room as they tried to figure out what HYDRA could be planning.

“Project Insight,” Clint breathed from the floor, staring at the coffee table in front of him, eyes flicking back and forth rapidly as he figured out what they were up to.

“What‽” Phil looked down at his Conjux in shock at the very thought.

“Insight is supposed to be an anti-terrorist preventative measure,” Clint responded, blinking rapidly as he sorted through his thoughts.

“Oh Norns,” Loki breathed, picking up on Clint’s idea. “They’re going to use it to get rid of every threat to HYDRA’s plans for world domination.”

“Starting with us,” Natasha added flatly. She knew where this was going. Project Insight’s weapons would first be used to take out Avengers Tower before it would be turned on the civilians and government officials that stood in the way of HYDRA’s plans.

“Time to call in the others,” Bruce murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Shall I begin messaging the others?” JARVIS questioned quietly.

“Please,” was Tony’s only comment as he settled against Steve’s side.

“Calls going out to Miss Potts, Colonel Rhodes, Lieutenant Wilson, Mister Hogan, Agent May, and Agent Skye. Anyone else?” The AI asked.

Steve and Tony both sighed quietly, knowing from Rhodey that Sam still had issues stemming from his time as a Pararescue. Neither of them wanted to bring Rhodey’s Omega Conjux into this when he was just beginning to heal, but they realized that Sam was going to be brought in whether they liked it or not.

“Pass a message to Doctors Foster and Cho,” Bruce requested, biting his lip. “We’re going to need all-hands-on-deck. Including Thor.”

The God of Thunder had been in Asgard until the previous week when he’d come to visit for a few days before heading off after his girlfriend who was currently working in Amsterdam.

With a collective sigh, the team settled in to wait.

Once everyone had gathered – the Agents and Doctors arriving with Thor due to Loki’s magic – plans were hatched.

“We need one of the agents,” Phil remarked as they prepared, staring at the hologram idea board. “We need someone to get information from. Did he find a list of HYDRA agents?”

“We have three names,” Tony replied, sifting through the information on the drive. “The rest are encrypted still.”

“Who?” Skye questioned, looking up from where she was doing something on her computer.

“Jasper Sitwell – fucking hell – Brock Rumlow – no fucking surprise there – and John Garrett,” Tony listed, tipping his head to the side as he stared at the last ID card on the screen. “Why does he look familiar?”

“He was one of the Agents assigned to look after me after I woke up,” Steve grunted, cleaning his sidearm. He couldn’t believe how naïve he’d been – the old saying ‘cut off one head and two grow back’ was true in this case.

“Oh. Right.”

“We’ll have to get Sitwell,” Clint remarked flatly – Jasper was one of his and Phil’s closest friends, but to find out that he was HYDRA – as he marked down more plans. “Rumlow has his STRIKE team, and Garrett is on assignment in Berlin – the irony – but Sitwell is mainly a paper pusher now, he’ll be painfully easy to catch.”

Which is how Natasha, Sam, and Steve ended up in a car on the highway with a whimpering man in the backseat next to Natasha as they attempted to shake off their tail.

Fighting broke out when the car was flipped, and the same man that Steve could remember seeing on the roof stepped out of one of the following vehicles carrying a grenade launcher of all things.

The fighting dropped down onto the street below them, and Steve watched Sam and Natasha fight for a quick second before he lost sight of them and he had to turn his attention back to the metal-armed man in front of him.

Several rounds of gunfire slammed into the shield as Steve moved to keep the man’s attention on him rather than on Natasha and Sam, who he could hear quickly dispatching the men that had come with this one.

They went back and forth for a long time before Steve got a good hit in, which knocked the man’s mask away. He only spared the mask a quick glance before settling into a stance where he’d be protected if the man came at him again.

When the man turned to face him again, his arms dropped slightly and he nearly fell to his knees. “Bucky‽” He croaked out, staring at the man.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Steve blinked at him before speaking again, though he brought the shield back up because it was evident that Bucky didn’t remember him.

“You are. You were born James Buchanan Barnes to Winifred and George Barnes in nineteen-nineteen. You had three younger sisters; Edythe Marie, Alyce Rosemary, and Rebekah Caroline.” Steve circled him slowly to keep him focused and in view. “Your Names began to appear in nineteen-twenty-nine and by nineteen-thirty-seven they were complete to read ‘Anthony Edward Stark’ and ‘Steven Grant Rogers’ with –”

The man wearing Bucky’s face cut him off by staring at something behind Steve’s back, and when Steve turned to see Natasha and Sam approaching, he relaxed slightly and turned to face the now empty space where Bucky’d been standing.

The colorful curses that spilled from his mouth would usually make him color, but he just had his Conjux within his reach, and now the other Alpha was gone. Again.

With a practically feral growl, Steve slammed his shield down into the pavement before taking a deep breath with closed eyes to calm himself down. He looked up at the others as he rose back to his feet from kneeling on the pavement before speaking, “We’re going back to the Tower. We’re going to have to fix this.” He stalked off after that, pressing lightly to the tracking chip in his shield before settling down on the curb to wait for someone to come get them.

When the ‘jet settled amongst the rubble, and the ramp opened to reveal Tony standing in the belly of the plane, Steve attempted to plaster a smile on his face but knew from the look on Tony’s face that he’d failed. The Omega waited for Steve to come to his side before he wrapped his arms around the Alpha gently and nuzzled against his cheek.

“He was here,” Steve whispered into Tony’s skin, his shield falling from numb fingers to the floor. “Bucky was so close.”

Tony choked at the information, pulling back to stare frantically into Steve’s face. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. Even with the face paint and shaded goggles, I would know him anywhere.”

“We’ll get him, sol. We’ll get our lune back,” Tony told him quietly, pressing their foreheads together. Tony drew him farther in, coaxing him into sitting down on one of the benches before he turned to Natasha and Sam, “We’re getting suited up when we return. We have no choice but to go in _now,_ before Bucky’s desertion of his mission forces their hand.”

He returned to the cockpit, talking quietly with Clint who was piloting before returning to Steve’s side. He drew the Alpha’s head down to his lap and begun running his fingers through dirty blond hair before they started to talk about what they were going to do.

They all suited up and headed to Triskelion, prepared to fight. They knew that there would be resistance – most likely from Alexander Pierce, the current Leader of both SHIELD and HYDRA.

They’d split up, Natasha and Clint headed to the airport to head of the World Security Council members so that they’d have an in. Natasha took the place of the only female Council member, who gladly gave up her place to stay in her own jet where she’d have an opportunity to sleep off a monumental migraine that she’d been developing since taking off from London.

Clint hid the ‘jet when the helicopter came for the Councillors and watched as they left before radioing in to the others to let them know that they were on their way.

The fight to get the chips into the Helicarriers only took twenty minutes after Hill and Fury blew up some of the fight jets that HYDRA Agents were preparing to use against them.

Steve barely registered the fight against Bucky, at least until the end when he’d put the chip in and activated it. He watched the lights blink green at him as the control chips disappeared back into the consol. He spun on his heels, moving to the railing of the catwalk as he stared down into the bottom of the Helicarrier.

He stared down at the form of his Conjux for a moment, watching the frustration and panic as it flitted across the other Alpha’s face with each little noise and wiggle of the older man’s body as he tried to escape the beam pinning him down. He flipped down off the catwalk tow here Bucky was pinned down, pausing just in front of the other to calm his racing heart for a moment. After that moment, he didn’t hesitate to lift the beam up, no matter the growls and noises that escaped the other man. Once Bucky was free, he dropped the beam back down and backed up, drawing his shield up in front of him as Bucky got to his feet.

“You know me,” Steve remarked, not in the slightest bit put out when Bucky punched the shield and forced him back a step.

“No, I don’t!”

“Bucky,” Steve grunted, pulling the shield higher to protect himself. “You’ve known me your whole life.” He hadn’t been expecting the backhand, but he went where it pushed him. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

Force on the shield as Bucky screamed “Shut up!” at him, pushed him back further across the glass and metal, flinging him about like a ragdoll.

Steve reached up and shoved his helmet off, dropping it to the glass below their feet. “I’m not going to fight you,” He told the other, before he dropped the shield, sparing only a single moment to watch it plummet into the Potomac before he spoke again, “You’re my friend. And my mate.”

He could barely breathe as Bucky tackled him to the floor. He could see the wild Alpha in Bucky’s eyes – his goggles having been knocked off at the beginning of their fight – Bucky’s brown and blue(?) eyes.

A steady growl picked up in the other’s chest as he began to wildly lash out. His hits calmed after a few punches, and he whimpered out, “You’re my mission.”

Steve merely watched him for a long moment through one eye, the other having already swollen shut. “Then finish it,” He told the brunet. “’Cause I’m with ya ‘til the end of the line.”

Tony voice added in softly from the comm on Steve’s sleeve, “And no matter what it takes we will bring you home.”

Bucky stared at him for a long time, and looked about to speak when a large part of the carrier broke off and crashed down next to them, spilling Steve into the water.

Steve couldn’t remember what happened next, but from how Tony told it: Bucky had ended up with a grip on the beam next to them and hadn’t gone into the water, but he’d dived in after Steve, and dragged both him and his shield up onto the bank of the Potomac before pushing the tracking button. Tony hadn’t seen the other Alpha when he arrived but had a feeling that the other was around, watching. Steve remembered none of this; he just remembered falling before waking up in Medical at the Tower with his limbs wrapped up while they healed from the fall against water that had been “like hitting concrete” according to Dr. Cho.

After two weeks, Steve was allowed out of his bed in Medical, as long as he took it easy – meaning no running a marathon every morning (which made Sam smirk, at least until Rhodey cuffed the Omega on the head, and Tony threw a roll of paper towels at him) – and used the crutches provided to him for a least a week. He’d sighed dramatically before agreeing and once that was over, he headed up to the common floor to see what everyone else was up to.

“What are you doing?” He questioned when he noticed that everyone was gathered around the room in different places, each with their tablet in hand.

“Nat shoved everything onto the internet,” Clint began, dropping his tablet into his lap as he shifted around on the couch where he was sprawled out against Phil’s side. “Everything – HYDA shit included. So now we’re going through it to see what we can find.”

“What have you found so far?” Steve asked as he hobbled carefully over to the loveseat where Tony was curled up into one end.

“So far: three weapons caches that not even Hill knew about, a research facility specializing in attempting to hybridize humans with animals, and a chocolate factory,” Sam rattled off, stretching out on the floor to get more comfortable with Rhodey’s feet resting on the back of his calf from where the Beta was sitting in the chair above him.

“A chocolate factory?” Steve questioned skeptically, dropping heavily into the space next to Tony.

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Tony replied, shifting around until Steve could comfortably lay back against his legs and rest his head in the engineer’s lap.

“What are we looking for exactly?” Steve asked as Tony handed him another tablet.

“Anything that could be an issue, so human experiments that are still alive, any weird anomalies like the chocolate factory, etcetera,” Tony answered, one hand dropping from scrolling across the tablet’s surface to run lithe fingers through Steve’s hair.

Steve hummed happily at the touch before beginning to go through the list of files at his disposal.

At the end of the day, just before dinner, they went through their findings for the day and kept a running tally of who had found weird things while maintaining a list of everything of importance. So far Clint was winning the weird shit list with twelve and Sam came in a close second with ten.

The list of worrying issues seemed longer than the constitution, with several items circled in a multitude of colors based on their priority. Among the list of problems was a list of ten other Winter Soldiers that had been created at different intervals of time with different versions of the Serum, and a shorter list of activated Mutants that were still alive – a list which included a set of twins, P. and W. Maximoff.

The holding spaces for these souls were international. The Winter Soldiers were listed as being kept in three different facilities in two countries – Russia (Whouffle Island, and somewhere in the Siberian Mountains that was listed only as a set of coordinates) and Brazil (Somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest, also listed only as coordinates). The Mutants were being kept in three other facilities in three countries – a castle in the small country of Sokovia (this was where the twins and two others were being kept); one in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany; and one in the forests north of Novinka, Russia.

With that information, they started looking to see when the next meeting of the United Nations would be, as they would need permission to move non-American citizens with anomalous differences to American soil. A quick call by Coulson to the Secretary of State, and their answer was found – a week until the next session, and they were still taking speakers, so after a carefully worded request, they were booked in to speak before the members.

A week later, and the Avengers who weren’t going to the meeting where crowded around the TV in the theatre room of the Tower, while the others – Phil, Tony, Natasha and Loki – were waiting in a conference room of the UN Headquarters in New York. Phil was going to explain the issue they faced, Tony and Loki were to outline their rehabilitation plans, and Natasha was in charge of explaining how the missions were planned to go.

The last speaker concluded her announcements before bowing to the officials and leaving the room. Steve, who had come along as a support, stood just outside of view in the conference room and watched as the others entered the Main-Hall and stepped up to the podium.

“Good morning, representatives,” Phil greeted, adjusting the microphones on the podium carefully until they were in the appropriate places for the four of them. “We have a very urgent matter that has reason to be brought to your attention.”

“If you’ll look at page twenty of your guide for today’s proceedings, you should see a list of forty-nine individuals of several different citizenships. Each name on that list is someone who could pose a possible danger to world peace if given the proper orders. The first ten have been injected with several unstable versions of the Super Soldier Serum and are currently under some form of stasis in Russia and Brazil, held in various HYDRA compounds. The other thirty-nine are of the _Homo sapiens superior_ population.

“We don’t how many are living, and we’re requesting international permission to investigate.”

One of the representatives in the front of the room pressed a button on her table and spoke into the microphone, a distinct German accent heard in her words, “What are you planning to do?”

Tony stepped forward at the words, hands in his pockets as he stopped in front of the podium. “We’re looking to free as many of those affected by HYDRA like my mates as possible while destroying as many of HYDRA’s strongholds as we can in the process. If we must kill those we find, we will do it because there is no other option, and we will do it as humanely as possible. Otherwise they will be gathered up and brought here–” He clicked the clicker in his hand, pulling up a picture of the Residence, the property created specifically for rehabilitating the ones they’d find. “–a secure facility where they will be rehabilitated and then potentially reintegrated into society.”

Another representative turned on his microphone and spoke before a translator spoke after him, “How do you plan to rehabilitate them?”

“The facility is equipped to handle a rampaging Hulk,” Tony answered, having seen the look on the man’s face. He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at a knot, before speaking again, “We have specialists on board, and on hold, to deal with anything and everything that could be happening with those we bring in. Both Loki and Professor Xavier of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters are also on hand with helping deal with those we bring in.

“We – the Avengers I mean – are all affected by our pasts, and we are most likely the best to help deal with the consequences of what HYDRA has done to each and every single one of those that we will find.”

After the meeting, and with the approval of the Representatives to go looking for those listed, the Avengers that had come to the meeting gathered in the lobby. Steve and Sam, who’d arrived in the middle of the presentation to keep him company, joined the other four to wait for Happy with the car. Steve hadn’t been paying attention to anything but focused when he registered the approach of someone from behind him.

He turned around with the rest to face a lithely built African man – an Alpha from his scent – who’d approached with a young woman – a Beta – who appeared to be a relation of his.

Natasha was the first to speak, “King T’Challa.” She bowed to him in a sweeping gesture which each of the others followed in suit.

The Royal simply waved it off and smiled at them. “Madam Romanova,” He greeted in return. “I just wanted to extend the services of my Kingdom if they are needed.”

Steve blinked, his hands trembling slightly. He couldn’t speak, but agreed with Natasha’s thanks to the young King. He suddenly remembered an article he’d read about the previous King’s death the year before.

King T’Chaka had been visiting family in Argentina when his car had careened off the side of the road and down a steep embankment into a ravine. The oddest thing about the incident was that the King’s personal driver had survived, unconscious on the side of the road, but alive none-the-less.

Steve squeezed Tony’s hand desperately, leaning into the Omega’s side to ground himself as he listened to T’Challa’s ideas for how Wakanda could help.

T’Challa spoke for a long moment with Phil before he dipped his head to them and turned away to go to his own car that had arrived. His sister, Shuri, followed him after dipping her head to the group.

Phil sighed quietly and rubbed his fingers over his temples, “King T’Challa has offered his services more specifically for when we find the Winter Soldiers. He and his own technologists looked through the files we have on James, and they’ve found some notes that suggest that he had his brain messed with, which bares the idea that the others have as well. They don’t want the viable Soldiers too badly harmed, so they’ve offered to have their own specialists deal with them until we have time and figured it what to do.”

Steve didn’t want to have to T’Challa’s help, but he knew that both Tony and Bucky would force him into sending the latter away to Wakanda with the other Soldiers until they had time to deal solely with their issues. He just nodded his head and calmly walked to the car once it’d come to a stop in front of them.

Tony shook his head when Sam opened his mouth, warning the other Omega off from commenting, before he followed his Conjux into the car.

#  **~x~**

Another month and a half passed with the team clearing out HYDRA facilities as they went through the list. Sokovia had been one of the last on the ever-changing list, and it seemed to take forever for them to get there after having to clear out one facility only to find that the ones they were looking for had been moved somewhere else.

The castle facility was at the top of a hill, overlooking the city, and immediately Steve hated the sight of it. The fact that this architecturally beautiful place, with its high walls, cobblestone walkways, and staggered buildings, could be used to torture dozens of people immediately darkened his view of it.

The team carefully picked their way across the terrain in between them and the lower portion of the castle that was hidden by the woods, trying to keep from being spotted on any of the cameras set up on the trees. They reached the first of the walkways, and the battle commenced.

Steve absently noticed the red shimmering energy surrounding objects around the room, and the silver streak that passed by and knocked down HYDRA agents before anyone else could reach them.

Once all the Agents had been decommissioned or killed (not exactly what they wanted but occasionally necessary), Steve pulled his cowl off and studied the number of men around them. His count of the dead was a dozen, and the unconscious ones was an even fifty-three.

Turning his attention to his team, he wasn’t surprised to see Tony and Bruce at the machines in the room, going through the information but he was surprised to find Clint off to the side with his arms wrapped around a pair of young adults.

“Clint,” Steve called, stepping around a pair of unconscious HYDRA agents who had been handcuffed together. He watched the door for Thor and Natasha who’d disappeared to go through the rest of the castle’s rooms.

“Steve, let me introduce you to Pietro and Wanda Maximoff,” Clint remarked, dropping his arms from around their shoulders to their waists.

“Captain,” The young Omega woman greeted, brushing red hair back behind her ears as she pulled away from Clint’s embrace to shake his hand.

“Miss Maximoff,” Steve greeted in return, a small smile blooming on his face. “How did you two come to be here?”

“Our parents were killed in the early part of two-thousand-four by the military conflict between our Rebels and the Russian Military. One of the sides – we still don’t know which – had American munitions. Our home was destroyed, killing our parents and trapping us inside. Inside next to an unexploded bomb labelled _Stark Industries_. We were… We were there for three days before anyone could get in and rescue us.

“For years… For years we hated Starks as they were who brought our pain. We wanted revenge but did not think it would happen, so we turned our aggression elsewhere, into protests for our country or fights against injustice.”

Pietro picked up for her, a hand brushing down her arm lightly as he continued, “In two-thousand-ten, we were at a rally. When the police came to split up the protest, several dozen of the protestors, including us, were ‘arrested’ by HYDRA and offered the chance to get the separation and rights we wanted, as well as anything else we wanted, so long as we underwent some experiments. We agreed.

“The tests we were put under … they were hard. They nearly broke us. Wanda’s powers weren’t hard to get to the surface, she’d always had some ability before this, but to get mine to the surface they pushed almost too hard.

“We’d been waiting to escape for almost a year now, and then two months ago, a new guard came to replace one who’d been reassigned. He did not seem like the other guards though, he took pains to talk to each of us when he could. He explained a lot of things to us – like how Stane had been dealing Stark Industries products under the table and shitty ones at that or how you all had gone to the United Nations to get permission to clear out HYDRA and were coming for us –before he left again.

“We even made a plan. We were to wait to be let out of our cells for the day and then help in any way that we could once you go here.” Pietro ran a hand through his white hair, motioning to Clint with the other, “I hadn’t expected to find my Matches among our saviors.”

Pietro went on to explain how the ‘guard’ had looked. Steve immediately knew from the description that Bucky had been the one to come for them. And when Pietro passed on the message that he would see them in Siberia, Steve knew that they would only find him after going for the last of the Winter Soldiers. They just had to finish up and then they’d get him back.

#  **~x~**

Another three months of clearing out HYDRA bases and burning them to the ground, and the removal of thirty names from their list (the remaining nineteen made up of the five Soldiers they were about to get, and fourteen others who’d seemingly disappeared from human memory), they were finally going to Siberia for the last of the Winter Soldiers.

Clint landed the new extra large quinjet (with built in cryogenic chambers) on the plateau just south of the coordinates of the facility. He and the others watched as Tony and Steve – the team had agreed that Steve and Tony would go inside first to collect Bucky before they’d go in and get the other Soldiers – headed up to the vault door to the facility.

Steve took a deep breath of the icy Siberian air before following Tony inside the open door of the bunker. He listened to the silence for a long moment before heading in the direction that he could sense Bucky.

Tony carefully pushed open the heavy door to the cryo chamber holding room. He scanned the room carefully with his sensors before speaking, “Only one heat signature.”

“Bucky?” Steve called out, stepping farther into the room and stopping short at the splatter of blood on the glass of the cryo tubes that were full. “Bucky‽”

“Stop worrying, mo shíorghrá.” Bucky’s voice rang out from the other side of the room, hidden in the shadows behind the empty pod where Steve gathered Bucky had once been kept. “There was no other choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stevie,” Bucky sighed, staring at the chair in the center of the room. “They wiped us after every mission before sticking us back under. I couldn’t remember my last mission before you touched me … but I remember now.”

“What did you do?” Tony asked, watching the Alpha carefully as he moved to the chair, trailing metal fingers over the leather arms.

“I’m sorry, m’fhíorghrá,” Bucky told him, not looking at him as he beat his hand against the chair. “I’m sorry I killed them.”

Tony gaped at him for a long moment before swallowing the lump in his throat and taking a deep breath. “You didn’t kill them, lune. The Alpha Soldier did. The Alpha did.”

“Howard was taking a failed version of the serum to be destroyed before they were to go on vacation. It was only supposed to take an extra hour of their time.

“They were a few meters ahead. A bullet to the tire, and the car spun into a tree. Maria was already dead; her seatbelt had broken, and she’d gone through the windshield. Howard was barely conscious.

“Knock to the head and Howard was out. Stole the serum. Pushed the car down the ravine. Returned. Made them.” He motioned to the five pods. “They were stable for the first few months, and then they turned unstable. Started killing techs. Had to be put under and haven’t been used since.

“It was better to just put them down because there is no changing them. They’re killers and they relished in it. Even before the serum.”

“Buck,” Steve stepped up to his side and wrapped his arms around the other Alpha.

“Natalia – sorry, Natasha, I forget – told me what was going on. She started leaving notes for me in the facilities after you were gone. I know about Wakanda. You’re going to take me there until you can figure out how to get rid of this piece of shit–” He motioned to the metal arm with his flesh one before continuing, “And the programming. I refuse to have someone accidentally finding out the words and using them against you.”

Steve sighed against Bucky’s shoulder before nodding and pulling away. “Come on, there’s no point in staying here then.”

Tony – who’d stepped out of the suit while Bucky spoke – bounced over on careful feet and threw his arms around Bucky’s neck. “We’ll miss you.”

Bucky chuckled wetly, pressing their foreheads together. “I’ll miss you guys too.”

They took a few minutes to get themselves together before exiting the bunker to rejoin the others. Steve shook his head at them before leading Tony and Bucky onto the jet. He moved up to speak with Clint about contacting King T’Challa about them coming to Wakanda.

Clint nodded after Steve was finished and begun sending a message to T’Challa using the private radio line to Wakanda that they’d gotten set up. It only took a few minutes for a return message with coordinates to arrive. Clint copied them into the GPS before preparing the plane to leave. Natasha returned to the cockpit from going through all the boxes in the bunker that Bucky had put aside once he’d finished rigging the place to blow. She’d also added more explosives, the whole group wanting a final show for any remaining HYDRA.

Steve settled down next to Tony and Bucky for the ride, dropping down on Bucky’s left side and taking the older Alpha’s metal hand in his own. Tony had dropped down on Bucky’s other side, the Omega grabbing the larger flesh hand of their Conjux between both of his own.

Arriving in the lush green kingdom of Wakanda took all their breaths away, and seeing the young King made Steve all the more grateful for the changes of the future.

T’Challa greeted them happily, eyes fixed on Sam for a long moment before he focused on explaining that they would be putting Bucky under the next day as it was late enough already, and they wanted all of them to get a good meal, a nice shower, and a good restful sleep before they put Bucky back under ice. He explained that he’d had rooms set up for them and that he’d take them there to get ready for dinner, which was to be shared between the visitors and the King’s remaining family members.

As each entered their room, they thanked the King profusely before disappearing through the self-closing doors that cut them off from the hall.

Steve snickered to himself as Sam was the last one left with the young King, and at the look on the Omega’s face as the Alpha led him away. He entered the room he’d share with Tony and Bucky, stopping to watch as Bucky carefully rooted around the room, searching out weak points and exits.

They settled into the shower carefully after he was finished, all three of them pressed together tightly as they carefully touched and washed every inch of each other with soft-pressing hands.

The next morning, Steve woke up with Bucky pinned between him and Tony, the Omega wrapped around Bucky like an octopus. He smiled sleepily, watching the two bright spots in his life curled together like a pair of kittens. He gently brushed his fingers over Bucky’s hip before getting up to get ready for the day.

He set out warm clothes for Bucky, even though he knew that the other Alpha wouldn’t feel the cold while asleep. It made him feel better though, to know that he was taking care of his Matches in any way possible.

An hour later, after a warm breakfast, they were all gathered in the lab where Bucky would be placed back into cryo, separated from the other Soldiers. The pod he’d be stored in looked like it was something out of one of the weird science fiction movies that Loki enjoyed. It was all sleek glass and shiny silver metal, and it visibly made Bucky relax some of the tension he’d been carrying around.

Two of the technicians came over from their consoles to assess Bucky’s health and run a few tests before they left him to say his goodnights. Steve and Tony were the first to go over to where he was sitting on the small exam table. None of them said a word, simply being close to one another while they waited for privacy.

The rest of the team, sensing this, quietly said their goodnights to Bucky before leaving the three men to talk.

“I’ll be back before you know it, Stevie,” Bucky commented quietly, tapping his fingers gently against the other Alpha’s abs. “If I know you guys well enough, it should only take a couple of months. Tony and Bruce will work with Doctor Cho and T’Challa’s techs to figure out my arm.”

“T’Challa has graciously gifted me with enough vibranium to make you three arms,” Tony told him, dainty fingers reaching up to play with one of the braids that Bucky’s hair had been pulled back into by Loki and Natasha.

Bucky smiled at him before continuing his speech, “I’m sure that Loki is already conversing with the brain Docs and Professor Xavier about my head, as we speak. So, you see? It’ll be fine.”

Steve silently nodded his head, before leaning in to press his forehead against Bucky’s temple as he tried to keep himself from begging the other to stay out.

One of the techs came over at the moment to tell them that it was time and both Steve and Tony released him, settling in to watch as he climbed into the pod and followed the tech’s instructions. He waved at them before laying back and closing his eyes, letting the cryo take him under.

#  **~x~**

Three months. That was how long it took before the magics of Loki and Professor Xavier’s mutation broke the final hook of HYDRA’s programming in Bucky’s mind. They’d visited once every couple of weeks, with Natasha or Wanda on hand to say the switch as a check to see if they succeeded, as they attempted to remove the multitude of hooks that HYDRA had placed in Bucky’s brain.

It took nearly as long for the Doctors to figure out the safest way to remove the damned arm. The stupid thing was tied into nerves and bolted to bones, and not in a safe way. The arm weighed too much on Bucky’s spine which constantly caused him pain, and it was realized to be an intentional torture plan put in place by HYDRA when the arm was designed.

After two and a half months, they figured out how to get rid of it. It took another week after that for Bucky to heal, and to figure out how to meld the new arm on in a way that would mean the most function and the least pain.

But now, three and a half months later, Steve and Tony were about to see him awake for the first time since they put him under (Bucky hadn’t wanted them to see him as the Soldier, so they’d been kept away.) and Steve was agitatedly pacing the room they were waiting in for Bucky to meet them, while Tony simply sat on the plush couch and stared at the door.

The door opened and they both excitedly looked up before being disappointed by the fact that the newcomer was Natasha and not Bucky. She smirked at them before stepping away from the door to let it open again and reveal Bucky to them.

Tony immediately jumped up from his seat and threw himself at Bucky, who caught him with a laugh and spun him around in wide circles with glee and strong arms.

Steve made his way over cautiously, watching Bucky for any signs of uncomfortableness. Bucky merely rolled his eyes once he’d set tony down before he grabbed Steve by the collar of his shirt and pressed a sweet kiss to the younger Alpha’s mouth.

“Don’t be dumb,” Bucky told him, wrapping Tony in his arms and leaning into Steve’s warmth.

Steve choked at the words before wrapping his arms around the two of them, burying his head against Bucky’s neck.

“’Til the end of the line, ya punk,” Bucky remarked, shifting slightly to press Tony between them.

“We will always bring you home,” Steve croaked.

“Soulmates are forever, no matter the time,” Tony murmured, eyes closing in bliss as he leaned against his Alpha Matches.

#  **~Fin.**

# 

**Author's Note:**

> [My Writing Tumblr](crimsonswolfden.tumblr.com) / Art - [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8728711), [Tumblr](http://pandeimos.tumblr.com/post/153952666719/my-second-contribution-to-the-triad-big-bang) / [Triad 'Verse Big Bang Tumblr](http://triadversebang.tumblr.com/)


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